New home to help displaced young girls

Socially displaced girls who live and work on the streets have been assured of a new home where they can receive food, shelter and the nurturing they need to develop into adults. Their new $1.5 million home, Credo Sophia House, which stands tall at the top of Park Street, was launched yesterday. Sophia House is an extension of the Credo Centre for Socially Displaced Children, and a project of the Credo Foundation for Justice, a non-profit, non-governmental organisation affiliated with the Holy Faith Sisters.

According to Sister Roberta O’Flaherty, director, the home will provide development programmes to help young girls prepare for productive adult lives, remedial work in academics, an opportunity to return to school, training in income generating skills, counselling, both individual and family, and programmes in parenting skills for young mothers and future mothers.  “From the beginning of our work in 1994 with socially displaced children and children who live and work on the streets,” O’Flaherty said. “we have viewed with equal concern the plight of all children, both girls and boys, who find themselves without a family support system on which they feel they can rely.”

She added, “It soon became clear to us, however, that the problem of displaced girls was, and is a much more insidious one than that of the boys, as the girls are often picked up by older men who offer them shelter in return for services, and are also frequently hidden away in prostitution.” Also present at the opening were Reverend Edward Gilbert Archbishop of Port-of-Spain who blessed the home, Christine Kangaloo, Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister, Social Services Delivery and Ronald Nash, British High Commissioner.