In today’s society, there are people who are affluent, people who are well-off and people who are poor. The affluent and the well-off are usually held in high regard while the poor are looked at with disdain. They poor are those people who are in the Low Socio-economic Status bracket. They sometimes cannot afford the basic necessities to sustain their lives. In Trinidad and Tobago however, there are programs and organizations that have been set up to assist these people in providing for their families.
Some of these programs are Servol’s Parent Outreach Program, the School Feeding Program, the Social Welfare Division and the Social Action Group in La Brea. The Parent Outreach Program is an initiative put out by Servol to assist parent who are interested, mainly women, in learning a skill that could help them to enhance their lives and provide for their families without leaving home. The Parent Outreach Program also teaches parents about child development and proper child rearing practices.
They cater mainly for women because the women are usually the ones at home while the men go out to work. Women who participate in this program are therefore given the opportunity to contribute to their households and raise their socio-economic standing. The School Feeding Program is set up and funded by the Government. Through the School Feeding Program the Government provides meals, both breakfast and lunch, for children whose parents cannot afford to give them a proper meal.
These meals provide the nutrient needed by the children for proper growth and development. The Social Welfare Division is also run and funded by the Government. The Social Welfare Division provides assistance in the form of cheques to single-parent families. The cheques are to help the parents to provide the basic necessities for their children. The Government also goes further by giving the parents the Trinidad and Tobago Conditional Transfer Card. This card is given to unemployed persons once certain criteria are met.
In order for individuals to receive this card they must be citizens of Trinidad and Tobago, they must be unemployed or unable to work and they must apply for the card and allow an investigation to be done. Money is transferred onto the card on the first day of the month. The amount of money given varies depending on the number of unemployed or unemployable persons in the household. The card can only be used to purchase food stuff from approved supermarkets. No cigarettes or alcohol can be purchased with this card.
The Social Action Group is funded and run by the Catholic Church Board in La Brea. He Social Action Group provides assistance to the needy people of the community. They assist parents by providing food, clothing and shelter for the children and the parents themselves. This group also offers training to parents in a number of areas. Some of the skills taught are interior decorating, floral arrangement, pvc craft and tie-dying. These skills can be used by the parents to provide an income for their families.
The Social Action Group also assists abused women and children by providing shelter for them and also teaching the women skills to help them get jobs so that they can be able to take care of their children. This group also provides individuals who are extremely poor with money and sometimes labour to build homes. Being in the Low Socio-economic Status bracket can be stressful for both parents and children. The organizations mentioned above are committed to assisting parents in providing a better standard of living for their children. They help provide parents with skills that will get them employment and raise them out of poverty.
