Brightening futures one life at a time

Dec 08, 2024 Features / Columnists, News, Waterfalls Magazine

Champions of Change…

Kaieteur News- Established in 2016 Champions of Change, a non-profit organization focused on empowering citizens is about to make a grand return with hopes of uplifting the future of the less fortunate.

During an interview with The Waterfalls, founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the organization Sabrina Craig gave a walk-through of what she has been up to since its establishment and plans for the future.

Sabrina Craig

The mission of Champions of Change was mainly to look into the health and talent development of less fortunate youths.

Craig told The Waterfalls that there was a point where around the city they had booths where persons can go and have testing done for a number of diseases. After the operations were being interrupted during COVID because of the seriousness of the pandemic, she decided to restart her operations this year and the booth should be up and running by next year.

Plans to resume full operations include hiring retired nurses as well as therapists and psychologists. However, she is looking to undertake another mission as well.

From this month, Craig and her staff plan to gather the homeless persons off of the streets, have them cleaned up and placed into the State-controlled night shelter, as hers is still under construction in C Field Sophia.

“So we’re gonna pick up the ones who suffer from alcoholism, clean them up, try to counsel them, motivate them, and you try to launch them up to life. Yeah. So basically, focusing on the picking them up next week and start a workforce, you know, venture with them, whereby cleaning them up,” Craig said.

Craig told this publication that additional support from the public is always welcomed. The Government of Guyana has pledged their support and the organisation is also looking to have a number of fundraising activities come 2025.

Tapping into the entertainment arena, Craig said that she has been in talks with Isaiah Laing who is the founder of Reggae Sting Jamaica, and she is hoping to collaborate with him to have a show done with a number of artists both locally and internationally, in hopes of raising fund to facilitate al the necessities the ne night shelter would need and to fund the operations.

Asked what sparked her interest in this type of effort, Carpenter sorrowfully told The Waterfalls that a friend of hers had her teenage daughters venture to the city in search of employment. She said things did not go the way they planned and they ended up not having anywhere to spend the night; they ventured to the seawalls and were sexually assaulted. Sadly, she was overseas at the time and due to shame and fear, a report was never made to the police and the perpetrators went free. Craig stated that if she was in the country, things would have played out differently.

Secondly, she said a close friend of hers turned to drugs and alcohol due to marital problems and has been living on the streets even since, not quite in his logical senses. Saddened by the outcome of the situation, Craig vowed to help him and others facing the same plight, as she feels if he had someone to talk to, or to advise him, things would have turned out differently.

This friend will be the first of many being taken to the night shelter to be cleaned up and rehabilitated and given a place at the new Champions of Change night shelter once it opens its doors.

(Brightening futures one life at a time)

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