CARE Celebrates 20th Anniversary Dedicated to Giving Youth a Second Chance There’s always concern about the fate of the adolescent young who fall through the widening cracks in the formal education system – especially those considered “too lazy” or “too troublesome” or for some other reason deemed unable or unsuitable to “fit” into regular classes at regular schools. Each year brings growing numbers of such students needing care across the island. They might have “done wrong” by seriously violating the school’s disciplinary code, or found “unable to make the grade” because of their “low marks” scored at the end of each academic term – or they may be considered to have adopted “bad habits” from a broken home or troubled single-parenthood. Or they may simply be found to be “too hard headed.” It just didn’t matter. They were simply either left to languish, their parents eventually asked to “take them out” of school, or they were “sent” to certain schools considered havens for the haunted, homes for the hard-headed, dustbins for the student trash rejected by the system. Over the past four decades, individuals at various levels of the catholic clergy have set out – in the name of The Father – to take better care of those the system rejected. First there was local priest Fr. Reginald John (Father John) who, some 20 years earlier, took it upon himself to “take off the streets” dozens of boys rejected by the system. Considered societal drop-outs, they ended up engaging in petty crime – theft, drugs, gambling and everything more attractive and adventurous than having to go to school every morning. In some cases they’d even been ejected from the family and ended-up begging near the island’s two Castries cinemas at the time (Clarke’s and Gaiety) or seeking petty jobs by the Castries Market on Saturdays. Or, they became what back then were derisively called “Wharf Rats,” who sought a living off the docks by “hustling” (begging) tourists, diving off cruise ships for coins, or offering to be guides – or deliverers of “whatever you want.” BusinessFocus May/June
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Fr. John tried hard in the early 1970s to introduce his gathered Lost Sheep to the word and way of The Lord. He fed, clothed and housed them – and sought ways and means to keep them off the streets. But he and his efforts were alone. The rest of the church didn’t openly identify with the cause of his unwashed sons of sinners. Theocracy wasn’t concerned with poverty. Liberation Theology was being frowned upon by the pre-John Paul II Vatican. The church was frowning on the then young Fr. Patrick Anthony (“Paba”) for introducing coloured cassocks, Creole language, local guitars and African drums to altar at the cathedral. Soon the congregation started going after Fr. John. He started getting accused of doing much more than just helping the poor little boys. Soon enough, Fr. John disappeared – and the boys were back on the streets, some heading to the lock-up at the fenced Boys Centre at Massade, others heading across the Castries Bridge to the Royal Gail at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Fast-forward twenty years and enter Brother Dominic Brunnock in the early 1990s. An Irish Presentation Brother at St. Mary’s College from as far back as the 1960s, he’d been shaping boys at the island’s main secondary school for decades. Bro. Dominic had seen over the years the thousands of young persons who were ejected from or rejected by the school system. They came from every school and their numbers grew each year. He set out to do something about it – and so, with a little free help from friends, on April 26th 1993 a new institution was born to do just that. The Centre for Adolescent Renewal and Education (CARE) opened its doors two decades ago this year in Anse La Raye to the wretched of the education system. The classrooms were bare, but their teachers bore loads of patience – and tons of goodwill. They knew they had a struggle on their hands, but they also knew each CARE student had as much a brain as anyone else. They observed, tolerated and
understood as they reached out to those in their care. They each had a life ahead – and a skill to be found and nursed now. CARE has the tools to teach each boy and girl something they could go out into the world with to survive. They wouldn’t walk out of CARE’s doors as certificated doctors or engineers, but they would have been sufficiently cared for to prepare them for basic entry into the world of work. In its two decades, CARE has grown at all levels. It now has Centres in Castries, Gros Islet, Soufriere, the Mabouya Valley and Odsan and has touched the lives of thousands of young men and women. It continues to get voluntary help from the community, even though never enough to move it ahead as fast as its needs grow and its services are needed. For its 20th anniversary, CARE hosted a Past Trainees Pageant on April 19th at the National Cultural Centre ahead of a Special 20th Anniversary Mass at the Minor Basilica on April 26th and a fund-raising and thanksgiving dinner the following weekend at the Royal St. Lucian Hotel. At all the activities, memories of Bro. Dominic were invoked by all who knew him and of his efforts here before returning home and departing to eternity. As it turns out, the Presentation Brothers – who have been running St. Mary’s College for decades on end – are winding down their presence here. Only two are left at the college and they’ll soon be gone as the Brothers retreat from St. Lucia. But Brother Dominic will perhaps be the best remembered among them, for his active role in the education of young St. Lucians at the College, but also for his role in ensuring that St. Lucia got CARE, to take care of the countless boys and girls whose care seemed to be the last thing anyone in the world cared about. Thanks to him, hundreds who would normally have been left to find their own way now have a place where they’re taught, through the CARE motto, that “Success is achieved through striving.” ¤