Help A Child Foundation promotes mentorship programme

June 27, 2019
Founder of Help A Child Foundation, Jason Evans (left), presents a cheque to Chloe Bailey (second right), a recipient of the foundation’s outreach activities, while her grandmother Ida Hughes (second left), and Petagaye Ferguson, the foundation’s legal adviser, look on.
Founder of Help A Child Foundation, Jason Evans (left), presents a cheque to Chloe Bailey (second right), a recipient of the foundation’s outreach activities, while her grandmother Ida Hughes (second left), and Petagaye Ferguson, the foundation’s legal adviser, look on.

With the many high school children who do not finish their education or the many teenage pregnancies, founder of Help a Child Foundation, Jason Evans, is targeting youngsters through his mentorship programme so that they can "change their stories."

Evans, who has been helping children in and around the Corporate Area with back-to-school supplies and reaching out to families of the less fortunate, said that he is trying to ensure that younger children's mindsets are targeted, so that they will be better able to engage in society and eventually we will have a better nation.

"We are starting off with a pilot programme that will run from the end of July to December. We are targeting 10 mentees from five primary schools in the Corporate Area and so we contacted some schools and asked them to help us in the selection process. We are also screening at the moment for mentors because we want people who are advanced in their careers and who have a passion for helping children to excel beyond their potential. The mentors are required to be in contact with their mentees at least three or four hours for the week," he said.

After the pilot is completed, Evans said that he is going to target other parishes, pairing children who are in grades one to five, so that they can get a different experience and understand that the stigma that is normally applied to children from a low socio-economic background, does not have to apply to them.

Positive changes

He said that children should be allowed to make their own positive destinies and he believes that it is through programmes like this that they will get the chance to make a difference.

"In the pilot, we are looking for some positive changes such as behavioural changes, improvement in school and schoolwork and the ability to build and foster positive relationships with their peers. That is the reason we target children from grades one to five because they are growing up and we are better able to assess them because children speak the truth," he said.

Currently, Evans believes that the nation is rocked with crime because most of the children did not get the chance to change their story.

He said that more foundations should embark on projects like these that target at-risk youth so they can realise their potential and rise above their circumstances.

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