THE PRESIDENT CALLS ON ‘BEETHAM’S ALL IN ONE’

“The child is father of the man”: William Wordsworth: My Heart Leaps Up.

Beetham Gardens’ All In One Child Development Centre, a blend of pre-school and primary, played proud host for about an hour on Monday to the country’s new President, His Excellency Professor G Maxwell Richards, and the First Lady, Dr Jean Richards.

But when President Richards went a-calling this week he was honouring not simply a school, but a community and a vision for that community. Ask almost anyone about Beetham Gardens, and the negatives, some of them not entirely undeserved, are trotted out. Few outside of the lower income community, however, have stopped to reason that Beetham Gardens, hemmed in as it is by history, immigration regulations, and the Priority Bus Route and the Beetham Highway, is but a child of the embittered past.

Its predecessor, Shanty Town, as well as the nearby equally lower income Sea Lots, was for long a jumping off point for individuals from the smaller islands, who having come here by schooner, sloop and fishing boat, and wishing to take up residence without the humbug of the immigration process, would call home. Of critical importance was that, as illegal immigrants, any attempt to register their children in state and/or state assisted schools meant that the parents could have been arrested and deported. Their children’s introduction to formal education would be delayed, coming in their teen years, when they would seek entry to classes under the country’s Adult Education Programme.

Many, however, haunted by the fear of deportation, would not seek out the Adult Education classes and the chances, severely limited, at upward mobility. And at that stage, so terribly late, what upward mobility? A large number would spend their wretched lives without being able to read and write, without knowing what it was to enjoy Samuel Selvon, Vidia Naipaul, Derek Walcott, C L R James, Michael Anthony, Earl Lovelace, or the poems of Eric Roach, Claude MacKay and Martin Carter. Very few, save they had developed the ability of recall, could even access jobs as messengers, and all too often not for long.

Just under 15 years ago, a young man, Wayne Patrick Jordan, decided that something had to be done to rescue the children of these luckless immigrants, and of others who were citizens as of right. It was a difficult task, but undaunted he set up the All In One Child Development Centre in an abandoned Government building. The conditions were primitive, but the challenge to help the many achieve a better and a brighter day dominated. Gradually, his Centre would become part of the Servol aim of establishing pre-school centres throughout the land. The Community Service Committee of the Rotary Club of Central Port-of-Spain joined in assisting All On One, which by then embraced a Primary section. Rotarians such as Raymond Tim Kee, a Past President of the Rotary Club, and Peter Aleong, then Chairman of the Club’s Community Service Committee, both of them Paul Harris Fellows as well as successful businessmen, took on the mantle of leadership by example.

They, along with Terry O’Neil Lewis, a member of the Tax Appeal Board; Errol Pilgrim, an education consultant and myself, organised workshops on effective parenting among others. The rationale was that the parents had to be involved. An involved parent tends to be a motivated parent, and we felt that, along with the direct tackling of the pre-schoolers and the primary pupils, the motivating of the parents would assist in raising the self esteem of, and setting positive goals for the youngsters.

The parents of a not inconsiderable percentage of the children in the Primary section had encountered difficulty in placing their offspring into state and state assisted primary schools. There is no need to go into the reasons, although this time around they had nothing to do with immigration status. What was important was the challenge the reasons presented. Mr Jordan, or Teacher Wayne, or Uncle Wayne, as he is known, has coached them with relative success. He has done this for several years, without benefit of salary, supporting himself and his family through selling produce on weekends at the Central Market. He has been assisted by a devoted team of three — Keisha Hackett, Charmaine Anderson and Natasha Marshall, all of them Servol trained — who teach the pre-school classes. In turn, there are two assistant teachers — Pamela Williams and Christine Daniel — undergoing training with Servol.

Last year, a Board was established, with Peter Aleong as Chairman, and including all of the earlier mentioned Rotarians with the exception of Tim Kee. Other members include equally concerned citizens, Leslie Scotland, a Rotarian; Guy Boldon, Jordan, as an ex officio member; Audrey Marchand and Wyncliff Roberts. Since then, the Board has arranged for the Centre to be painted; corporate sponsors have assisted: Angostura with a refrigerator and a cheque toward the tiling of the Centre’s floor; SmithKline Beecham (Caribbean) Limited with the sheening of the floor, and the presentation of four IBM computers, through the intervention of Gregory Sloane-Seale of the YMCA; and Penta Paints Caribbean Limited. But much remains to be done. The All in One Child Development Centre needs furniture, text books, funds to add yet another floor; a larger computer room, teaching aids and the list is formidable.

Monday’s visit of President Richards was the first by a Head of State to All In One. Several of the parents, all members of the Centre’s active Parent-Teacher Association turned up and were pleased at being introduced to him. To them the President’s visit, and that of Her Excellency meant an undefined recognition not only of the Centre itself and the Centre’s work, but of their hopes for a new and more supportive and sympathetic view of both All In One and the larger Beetham Gardens community. A parent, encouraged, as were the other parents, with the visit of the President and the First Lady said with moist eyes that their visit was an acknowledgment that the Centre’s Pre-School and Primary component was a contribution to the development of better (future) adults. “The children at All In One, with the help at home of their parents, will make for achievers. The President and Mrs Richards’ coming to All In One, and by extension the Beetham community, will urge the children and their parents on.”