Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Con­trac­tor As­so­ci­a­tion (TTCA) has do­nat­ed the pro­ceeds from their an­nu­al golf tour­na­ment to the La­dy Ho­choy Home (South) in Gas­par­il­lo.

Vice pres­i­dent of the as­so­ci­a­tion Glenn Ma­habirs­ingh said for the past 10 years, his or­gan­i­sa­tion has been sup­port­ing Non-Gov­ern­men­tal Or­gan­i­sa­tions (NGOs) and this year was the sec­ond time they’ve do­nat­ed to the La­dy Ho­choy Home (south).

Man­ag­er and su­per­in­ten­dent of the home, Sis­ter An­toinette Fa­hey be­lieves the TTCA’s $15,000 do­na­tion will go a long way in aid­ing the con­struc­tion of a new block of the home. The new Ear­ly In­ter­ven­tion Cen­tre would be used by the home to ex­pand their ear­ly in­ter­ven­tion pro­gramme where they pro­vide ed­u­ca­tion and ther­a­py for chil­dren who have de­vel­op­men­tal and learn­ing prob­lems as well as to help ed­u­cate par­ents how to fa­cil­i­tate their child’s learn­ing.

“Right now, they are in a lit­tle choked up sec­tion and we can on­ly deal with them in turns like twice a week. If we have bet­ter fa­cil­i­ties and more space, we would be able to deal with them on a more reg­u­lar ba­sis. That’s the thing about thing about this kind of pro­gram, the more you can buy in­to it, the faster the chil­dren can de­vel­op faster,” Fa­hey said.

“The vi­sion we have for that build­ing is…when chil­dren are re­ferred from the clin­ics, from the var­i­ous doc­tors and so on, they would be able to come here and with the help of like a phys­io­ther­a­pist, an oc­cu­pa­tion­al ther­a­pist, speech ther­a­pist, spe­cial ed­u­ca­tors – we would be able to put them through a se­ries of ex­er­cis­es and what­ev­er they need…to give them what­ev­er they need,” she said.

The new block in­tend­ed to serve at least 60 chil­dren, Fa­hey in­di­cat­ed, would cost them an es­ti­mat­ed $10 mil­lion to con­struct, how­ev­er, de­spite do­na­tions and sev­er­al toil­ing fundrais­ers, they have thus on­ly been able to raise $1.5 mil­lion.

Those who wish to lend any as­sis­tance to the home, ei­ther mon­e­tary or tech­ni­cal, can get in touch with them via their email at la­dy­ho­choy­gas­par­il­lo@gmail.com or call 650-2164.