Living Hands Clubconcludes year with uplifting performances |29 December 2020

One of the performances (Photo: Louis Toussaint)

After the lockdown in June, Living Hands Club, a non-governmental organisation, started holding extra classes for children for four days weekly at the Lighthouse Restoration Centre, Maldives. They concluded the year with a performance held on Saturday by all the children who attended these classes.

The Lighthouse Restoration Centre was set up by the Seventh-Day Adventist Church aimed at playing a pertinent role in the lives of people in the Anse Etoile and other districts, offering a holistic and natural approach to achieving better health.

During the year, they observed that most parents in the community are employed and spent most of their time at work and many children are found roaming around, getting distracted by all sorts of evils and temptations that are found in their surroundings and neighbourhood such as drugs, alcohol, stealing, fornication and other bad behaviour.

The Lighthouse Restoration Centre found it necessary to embark on a mission in finding ways to engage kids in activities that would teach them good values, and help them to be resilient, hence the creation of the Living Hands Club.

“We decided to introduce practical skills and biblical principles to achieve that. Lighthouse management made an appeal to volunteers with particular skills willing to pass on to the kids to come forward. A team of volunteers with specialised skills decided to come together on specific days during the week to teach the children,” explained Ms Inese Hall, the coordinator of the programme.

With the team of volunteers, they started providing extra classes after school from 3pm to 5pm at the centre.

The children were able to follow sessions in art and craft, music classes, character building, lessons on nature, gardening, practical and biblical teaching and practical cooking lessons. They were accompanied by the following facilitators: Debra Forte, Veena Cadeau, Rosemay Victor, Davincii Nourrice, Bernadette Jeremie, Benjamin Rose, Ena Alcindor and Inese Hall, the project and programme coordinator.

In cooking classes the children learned the basic principles of nutrition; the principles of food hygiene; different methods of cooking and how to prepare salad, pastry, juices etc.

After the six months, the children were able to enjoy their food most when they prepared it themselves and they were able to see the end results of their effort.

In music classes, the aim was to make them appreciate uplifting music and its use as a tool and to provide opportunity to learn a variety of musical skills and develop excellence in performance. The children can now put some chords together and make pleasant melodies and the audience was able to witness that effort.

In the art and craft, the aim was to help them make use of already available resources in the environment; to reduce wastage by increasing economic security and to prevent them from dumping waste in the environment hence reducing pollution. The children were able to learn different recycling techniques and they also created some beautiful art work which were showcased during that event.

In singing classes, the children were able to learn different scripture songs through singing.

In gardening classes they learned the basics steps in growing plants from seeds; cleaning the site; mixing oil using manure; sowing seeds; watering and transferring plants from pot to the ground. After six months they were able to see their plants bearing fruits.

Living Hands Club also organised outdoor programmes such as hiking, visits, running and other fitness activities.

Ms Hall concluded by saying that these classes are open to all children of the community and they want to attract more kids in the community with the programmes and recruit more volunteers with diverse skills to assist the kids in the Living Hands Club.

The event on Saturday was also graced by the presence of the Minister for Education Dr Justin Valentin, the MNA for Anse Etoile, George Romain and the parents of the children.

At the end of the programme, all guests were able to view the creations of the children and were served vegetarian snacks with fresh local juice.

Vidya Gappy