By Sharon Coldren | volunteer President and Executive Director
Over the last several months, CBCC has continued to provide assistance to a volunteer led in-person "on-line school" for over 20 children for whom the public schooling was continuing virtually -- but their parents were concerned that the children could not manage home (alone while the parents worked) to effectively complete their school work each day and use their computer links to their public school teacher effectively. Supervision and direct interaction with caring adults made a huge difference in results. Two fourth graders finally learned how to read - as it was discovered that they really could not. Loraine (Pat) Richards, one of CBCC's valuable board members, on her own, started this effort to lead a group of children through COVID online schooling when the lockdown began last year and continued it into this year for the grades that did not get to go back to full time learning. Her skills at motivating children to learn talents and develop confidence in themselves and interact well with the world around them is outstanding. She enlisted the help of Lion'ESS Bruce, who received some compensation via donations and a stipend paid for by this GlobalGiving grant stream.
Additional community donations - provided 1) a building space for the classroom, 2) a $2000 donation for airconditioning equipment from the Coral Bay Yacht Club, through CBCC, 3) free installation by the professional AC technician, and many many others provided food, snacks, transportation and support. The program ended with a party on Friday Dec 17th with the children reading out loud in short presentations shared via a Facebook video with parents, relatives and friends. The photos are stills from the video.
Students are intended to be back in regular school beginning after Christmas vacation, at the beginning of 2022. Let's hope this new round of COVID does not reverse those plans. "Ms. Pat" may evolve her program into an afterschool enrichment program next--paid by the parents.
In the US Virgin Islands, as the goverment and everyone struggles with getting actual hurricane recovery contruction projects started, and maintaining safety protocols with COVID, little that was anticipated 3 years ago, has happened yet. We continue collectively to do what we can.
In CBCC's year-end giving messaging, we are promoting the idea of supporting ongoing children's programs via the GlobalGiving portal in our newsletter emails, as well as encouraging general donations via usual methods. We have received a $2,000 check directly to support children's programs, that really should count as part of this overall funding goal. The GlobalGiving platform does give us a unique way to focus on the Children's programs efforts which will continue into 2022 and beyond.
Happy Holidays All!
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