CANADIAN CHARITY AIDS LOCAL CHILDREN 'REACH UP AND LEARN'
FEB 14, 2017
Canadian charity organisation Helping Hands Jamaica Foundation has donated Cdn$15,000 to the Gore Family Foundation (GFF) to help fund the Reach Up and Learn Programme, which provides skills to trainers who work with mothers of children in targeted basic schools across the island.
The trainers coach mothers on how to talk to, play with and sing to their children. They are shown how to do puzzles with, and read to, the pre-teens so as to improve the children's vocabulary and generally stimulate them in the easiest, happiest way, while encouraging good nutrition at the same time.
Helping Hands, organised by former Jamaican Davis Cup player and tournament director for Canada's prestigious Rogers Cup, Karl Hale, has used volunteer tourism to help build 13 schools across Jamaica and has been recognised as a steadfast friend to Jamaica and the GFF.
Dr Susan Chang-Lopez of the Epidemiology Research Unit of the UWI, heads up the Reach Up and Learn Programme which started in the 1980s.
Karen McDonald-Gayle (left) of the Helping Hands charity organisation hands over a cheque to Dr Susan Chang-Lopez (centre), of the Reach Up and Learn Programme and head of the Epidemiology Research Unit at the University of the West Indies (UWI), and Christine Gore, director, Gore Family Foundation.