The Parent Teachers Association (PTA) of the Clare Hall Secondary School is seeking public support for its breakfast programme for students in need.
PTA President, Tashae Donaldson, said the initiative which sees 50 students served breakfast twice a week started in January.
“We came up with those 50 from internal assessments from persons who deal with the students on a daily basis. Teachers and level heads from each level came together and they chose 10 students; that’s how we got 50.
“But I guarantee you that there’s more than 50 students who need breakfast in the mornings. The end goal is that everybody who is in need will be in a position to get something,” she told Observer.
“There are many students who leave home on a daily basis with nothing or nothing much to eat and we are aware that our bodies need food to survive and for the brain to function properly.
“We know students are coming from different homes and some of them do come to school without being fed and without having lunch, so we came together as a group and came up with this initiative to address the need.”
The PTA hopes to expand the programme to five days per week if resources allow, and by encouraging organisations and groups across Antigua to “adopt a day”.
They will be able to sign up to prepare and share a meal of their choice with the students once the school year resumes.
“We basically started with giving breakfast two days per week, every Tuesday and Thursday. There are three bakeries who came on board to assist us in this initiative. BlowAway and Brownies religiously donate every week and Dawn ‘til Dusk every other week, but we believe that extra hands are needed on board in order to really make this programme create an impact in our school community.
“We cannot do it alone, and hence we want to reach out to other persons or groups out there,” Donaldson explained.
“We have assistance from the teachers but there are times when it can become strenuous if those are the persons who are always coming on a weekly basis. So there’s a need for getting extra hands on board. If we can get people to pitch in, then the few persons who generally come can get a break. We get the bread and the different bread or buns from Brownies or the other bakeries but we get the meat on our own to give to the students.
“The students do look forward to the breakfast in the mornings. We see that there’s a demand, and if we could assist these students just a little bit more we’d have to open it up.
“We want to see if there are different groups out there, [or] let’s say somebody who is into catering, running their own business, a mom, somebody who has a child going to Clare Hall and just didn’t know about the breakfast club and can come up with something and say, ‘okay, you know what, today I’m gonna make breakfast that 50 students can get a meal’. If these persons are out there we want to appeal to them.”
She added that because breakfast is served before classes start in the morning, it has encouraged students to get to school early.
