Latest update January 17th, 2025 6:30 AM
Nations Schools awarded $11 million USAID development grant
– Youths in Sophia and East La Penitence being targeted
A contract valued at US$57,000 [approx. G$11.4 million) has been awarded to School of the Nations to conduct a project intended to help rescue youths from two depressed communities from a life of crime.
The project may possibly even help them to change course if they have already ventured on to the wrong side of the law.
Announcing the contract yesterday was Director of Nations, Dr. Brian O’Toole, who is the Project Manager. The contract will facilitate the execution of a project that will see Nations directing focus to areas that are believed to be high crime areas.
Targeted for activities that will help to uplift youths are the areas of Sophia and East La Penitence. The project will span about six months.
“We will try to do something to offer the kids a path out of potential dangerous occupations. We will be working on art, music, video…teaching them the computer.
“Also on vocational skills, we have an entrepreneurial project that we are doing with them,” said Dr. O’Toole.
The project was kicked into motion a few days ago and the aim, according to him, is to reach 50 secondary school youths – 25 from Sophia and 25 from East La Penitence.
According to Ms. Louisa Mancey, the project will also entail literacy, numeracy and business and entrepreneurship sessions. While the afterschool aspect of the project will be coordinated by Louisa Mancey, her mother, Ms. Carol Mancey, has worked in the past on a project dubbed ‘On the Wings of Words’. She will continue in this vein.
The project, according to Louisa Mancey is geared at helping the youths to have a firm foundation that could prepare them for a bright future.
From left: Ms Carol Mancey, Dr. Brian O’Toole and Ms. Louisa Mancey
“The programme will be running every day after school…We will be engaging them for as long as the school term is in so they will be coming every day after school for the next six months,” said Louisa.
While some of the activities will be done at the New Market Street, Georgetown School of the Nations, Mancey said some activities will also be held at the Brickdam Secondary School. Already more than 100 students of Brickdam Secondary alone located in East La Penitence have been clamouring to be a part of the project.
“It will be engaging, it will be very exciting for them. The hope is that they learn lots of great skills,” Louisa said of the project.
Students will be selected based on an application process supported by parental or guardian approval or a recommendation from a church leader, police rank or other resourceful individuals.
According to Dr. O’Toole, while the project is slated for six months, the possibility of a follow-up project could become a reality once the ongoing efforts are proven to be successful. This is in light of the fact that USAID has already indicated that additional funds could be made available. “To try to achieve these kinds of goals in six months is almost unrealistic…to take people from impoverished backgrounds where maybe somebody is fallen foul of the law and to think of doing that literally in a matter of weeks you can take them out of that,” considered Dr. O’Toole.
Even as he outlined that Nations has a long history of working well with donor agencies, Dr. O’Toole said that his school has also been shortlisted for another project with the Citizen Security Strengthening Programme [CSSP].
The Nations School is able to conduct such projects through its Research Agency and has thus far been able to handle more than US$3 million in development grants over the past 25 years.
It is Dr. O’Toole’s expectation that the findings of the ongoing project will be the start of a bigger movement whereby government could eventually play an instrumental role in advancing developmental projects.
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