St Monica’s shares highlights and hurdles at AGM

ST Monica’s Children’s Home held its AGM on Wednesday, 11 September, to highlight its achievements and challenges faced in the past year.

Public and board members, donors, religious leaders, volunteers as well as individuals working in the field of childcare attended. St Monica’s chairman, Reverend Alvin Sigamoney said the Children’s Act continues to be the centre’s most important legislation. “The adherence to the norms and standards of child and youth care is paramount to our registration as a centre and is the baseline of our work with children. I appreciated all board members for their unwavering support, input and guidance to the home and it has been a pleasure to be part of a proactive, decisive and open-minded team,” he said.
He extended gratitude to treasurer Peter Cottrell, director Althea Daniels, the dedicated staff, donors, religious organisations, churches, trusts, foundation and private individuals for their worthy contributions in funds and assistance. “This has made a difference in uplifting the lives of our children who are the primary beneficiaries of your giving.”

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Althea shared that two of the five matriculants who wrote their exams excelled and are currently pursuing tertiary education in biological science and ground aviation. A previous child at the home recently graduated from Edgewood College and is now a primary school teacher. “The children’s forum remained active and met as the voices of all the children and youth to discuss matters affecting them. They attended monthly board meetings to present their report and two of them attended an international youth conference where they engaged with other youth in the province. Behavioural challenges with our children was a regular occurrence, as is to be expected, especially among teenagers,” she said.
Several successful programmes were also noted at the AGM, including teen empowerment, mentorship and tuition programmes, a toddler group, the good news club and other life skills activities.

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Peter reminded attendees that finances to St Monica’s are directed towards providing residential care to 84 children. “The financial trends in the current year are negative with further uncertainties in the future outlook.” He informed members about funds received from the department of social development, the National Lotteries Commission and other grant funders and donors and explained where they were allocated.
“Thank you to all those who have supported the home so generously over the last year. We recognise the seriousness of the challenges facing us, but also that we do have core pillars of strength to draw on, our board and staff team, the support of donors and our financial reserve,” he said.

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