Over the last several months, CBCC has continued to provide assistance to a volunteer led in-person "on-line school" for over 20 children for whom the public schooling was continuing virtually -- but their parents were concerned that the children could not manage home (alone while the parents worked) to effectively complete their school work each day and use their computer links to their public school teacher effectively. Supervision and direct interaction with caring adults made a huge difference in results. Two fourth graders finally learned how to read - as it was discovered that they really could not. Loraine (Pat) Richards, one of CBCC's valuable board members, on her own, started this effort to lead a group of children through COVID online schooling when the lockdown began last year and continued it into this year for the grades that did not get to go back to full time learning. Her skills at motivating children to learn talents and develop confidence in themselves and interact well with the world around them is outstanding. She enlisted the help of Lion'ESS Bruce, who received some compensation via donations and a stipend paid for by this GlobalGiving grant stream.
Additional community donations - provided 1) a building space for the classroom, 2) a $2000 donation for airconditioning equipment from the Coral Bay Yacht Club, through CBCC, 3) free installation by the professional AC technician, and many many others provided food, snacks, transportation and support. The program ended with a party on Friday Dec 17th with the children reading out loud in short presentations shared via a Facebook video with parents, relatives and friends. The photos are stills from the video.
Students are intended to be back in regular school beginning after Christmas vacation, at the beginning of 2022. Let's hope this new round of COVID does not reverse those plans. "Ms. Pat" may evolve her program into an afterschool enrichment program next--paid by the parents.
In the US Virgin Islands, as the goverment and everyone struggles with getting actual hurricane recovery contruction projects started, and maintaining safety protocols with COVID, little that was anticipated 3 years ago, has happened yet. We continue collectively to do what we can.
In CBCC's year-end giving messaging, we are promoting the idea of supporting ongoing children's programs via the GlobalGiving portal in our newsletter emails, as well as encouraging general donations via usual methods. We have received a $2,000 check directly to support children's programs, that really should count as part of this overall funding goal. The GlobalGiving platform does give us a unique way to focus on the Children's programs efforts which will continue into 2022 and beyond.
Happy Holidays All!
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Coral Bay Community Council has continued to support programs for children during this COVID period. Three small summer school programs run by volunteers received support using our GlobalGiving grant funds: The John's Folly Learning Institute, Negus Outdoor Camp, and remedial summer school tutoring.
We are also helping to fund rehabilitating a preschool building to open in the fall. Volunteer carpenters, donated appliances for the kitchen and other furniture are coming from the community
So far in 2021 we have spent $8000 on these programs.
We hope we will be able to announce some new larger initiatives to open facilities that will be exciting to donors - for children here. it requires cooperation from the Virgin Islands government.
Check out our website too!
Thank you for your donations!
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In the first quarter of 2021, CBCC used its grant funds to support a stipend for an assistant in a volunteer Children's School tutoring support program in Cruz Bay and to provide encouragement for a new summer children's programs by buying the school t-shirts. Funds are being reserved to continue to help with the construction of the preschool facility. Only $1,143 was spent thru April 15th from these funds.
Major efforts have been ongoing to try to be able to announce and actually start work on a broader community facility, so that we could make significant use of the GlobalGiving Funding platform to make a major difference in our Community, in the wake of the hurricanes. We are left with a hulking wreck where our elementary school used to be, and no willingness to engage in active plans for reuse. We keep hoping... and look forward to everyone's participation when we can move forward.
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During the last few months, COVID-19 precautions have meant no group childrens programs and Virtual Learning at home for students. CBCC got a grant from another sources to support in-person Virtual Learning tutoring so did not use these funds for that. Addtional Kindles were purchased to assist some students in getting online.
The Preschool construction project has been proceeding slowly, but surely, with funding from this grant and other funding sources. It is hoped that it can open in late January 2021, although that may be optimistic.
Donated Books have continued to be distributed at no cost to individuals and to the Little Libraries.
More effort has been undertaken, including hiring a Community Facilities Associate to focus full time on improving our facilities and trying to make use of the FEMA post-hurricane support funds that are only very slowly become available through the territorial government. This work is not funded under this grant -- but it is important to know that CBCC is continuing to work for children under a number of different program objectives. There is also work to get a playground set up here, but we are encountering difficulty in getting insurance to cover childrens programs or playgrounds.
Wishing everyone a better 2021 - with lots of real hugs and interactions - instead of our current Virtual Hugs. Big things will happen in the new year!
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Efforts to continue to restore and support children’s programs after Hurricane Irma continue, but progress has obviously been held up by COVID isolation. In this quarter, we have reprogrammed this funding and used other donated funds to purchase Kindles to allow children to access content and communicate with leaders of children’s groups using Facebook and other social media during the summer months that were devoid of organized in person programs.
We also began the purchase of supplies to repair and upgrade the building for a preschool. We hope it will become available as a small group meeting space for children and adults during COVID, prior to the ability to use the building for a preschool serving 21 children. This building is owned by the local Baptist church, and CBCC has committed to paying for building supplies and some work to make it usable. CBCC plans to spend at least $25,000 from other current fund sources, including about $6,000 of this grant.
We have just hired a new position for our work – A Community Facilities Program Associate – to focus our efforts and expand in this area over the next year and into the future.
Stay safe
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