A team of volunteers from the Illinois, US Church of the Nazarene on Friday completed a week of rehabilitation work at the Ruimveldt Children’s Aid Centre.
Repairs were done to the badly deteriorating building with the plumbing, fencing and the interior of the building being redone, head of the volunteer group Fred Prince told Stabroek News. He added that a basketball court was also put up for the 60 children who visit the centre after school and on weekends.
Alphonso Porter, who is associated with the head office of the Nazarene church at Queenstown, Georgetown, said that the church decided to assist in the renovation of the centre and the volunteers were brought into the country to assist. The team was expected to leave Guyana on Saturday. The team consisted of 11 persons including plumbers, an electrician, and a doctor among others.
Mandelin December, Head of Education at the Centre, said that she and other persons associated with the centre were trying to improve the building which has housed the centre for some time now. She related that when they started to do work on the building, they found out that the repairs needed were more than the centre could afford.
December recounted that as they started to remove rotten slabs of wood, they noticed that certain parts of the building were being undermined by termites. Thus, they could not open the centre to children from September to October last year.
December said that the facility depends on the volunteers and while children as old as 15 years can come to the facility, she mainly focusses her attention on teaching the four-year-old children reading and literature.
The main focus of the facility is to keep the youths off the road by keeping them occupied after school hours, patron Jessica Hatfield said. She further stated that there is also a daily feeding programme available to the children. “We sometimes have children as young as two years old coming and shaking the gate when they are hungry,” Hadfield said.
They help children with the homework, singing, dancing and various subject areas, she added.
While the facility is charity oriented, Hadfield said that the centre is mainly available to less fortunate children in the Ruimveldt area.
Dr. Kristen Ferguson said that while volunteering at the facility, she was able to test the blood pressure and sugar levels of approximately 100 residents in the community, ranging from ages two to 80 years old.
