| By Leon SuseranHead of the Camal International Home for battered women and children,Mrs Kissoon and the children of the Camal International home.Carmen Kissoon,Lyle Alzado Raiders Jersey, has made a call to the government to get more Social Workers in the schools and in the society.She said that the problems that face children in school and in the home can be shared with the social workers. “They need more child protection agencies, not one and two, but all about. In Port Mourant and Kilcoy so many kids not attending schools. Even the School Welfare Officers should monitor the Attendance Registers too.”Kissoon, herself a Social Worker, has been managing and caretaking the Camal Home at Kilcoy/Chesney, Corentyne since 1995. This is a project that she and her husband undertook after their return from residing in Canada for quite a number of years.Kissoon worked for a number of years at the Ontario Correctional facilities in Toronto where she dealt with a number of prisoners and counseled them.The Camal Home currently has 37 children, among them three babies who were abandoned by their parents. “I want them to have an education,” she declared.“I want to see these children grow up and have an education, be successful, be somebody. Not everybody cut out to be a lawyer and doctor; some will be farmers. So I teach them to do that. They plant and they sell plants sometimes; so they have pocket money. We train them to do everything, to do a little housework also. We teach them sewing and computers. There is a little library that they can go in their spare time and read. And they do beautiful handiwork, making pillow cases and towels,” she noted,Carmen Kissoon noted that she had a case where a girl in her care was raped in Port Mourant and the father “went to the station. Two days later, that father was out.”“A couple weeks ago, he raped the neighbour’s daughter and I said ‘people like them, when you are sure,Carlos Lee Astros Jersey, that this child is raped, don’t lose the guy anymore”, she noted. “Sometimes it’s a real frame- up and sometimes it’s the truth”,Nike Steelers #11 Markus Wheaton White Mens NFL Pro Line Fashion Game Jersey, she noted.She said that there are challenges and difficulties in running such a facility “especially when the government doesn’t help you”.“You have to get food, pampers, baby food, milk, porridge, everything for that little baby, you know? So how many little babies am I gonna keep? It’s a very hard work”, she posited.Her lifesaver is the Food for the Poor organization. She thanked especially Mr Alex Foster on the Corentyne whose organization has a very, very close relationship with the home.Kissoon has a staff that assists her with the day-to-day operation of the home including cooking, washing and cleaning. On many occasions, families and individuals, including organizations, would volunteer lunch,Anthony Martial Jersey, dinner or a snack for14- year- old Melissa uses the computer at the computer centre in the home.the kids and Kissoon welcomes this.She believes that she is doing a good and noble job for the children and responded to the fact that another orphanage and home for women might be opened soon on the Corentyne.“The outsiders who want to come back to Guyana are trying to say that we are not doing a good job and they can do a better job. Good luck! I am going to see if these people opening orphanages are going to be there 24 hours a day. I am doing this from my heart because I want to see the children happy,Drew Hutchison Jersey,” she posited.She noted that the home is also a safe haven for battered women who would turn up late at nights at her gate. She said that she would not ask any questions of the women when they turn up, since it can be a matter of life or death for the woman and that the last thing she would want to do is turn the woman away who would have to return to the abusive home.Abused women in Guyana have very limited opportunities to get out of their abusive relationships, she relates. “I [as an abused woman] would try to get assistance, but then with Guyana, if a woman has five or six kids, nobody will support her, she doesn’t have a job, so what choice would she have?“She would try to bear up and try to do some domestic work but there are no jobs in Berbice, so you try to make the marriage work,Dale Weise Canadiens Jersey,” the social worker said. “Who would keep you? Family is poor and they wouldn’t want to keep you with four or five kids,” she posited.In Canada, the system puts you in a home and gives you money until they find you a job. “You call 911, they take him right away, throw him in the jail and take you and carry you to a shelter.”Many times, she noted that the parents would turn up at the home demanding their children. “These mothers leave their kids to go to Suriname and Trinidad. When they come back they should not give them back their kids, but the Probation has that say. It shouldn’t be like that. Where were they [the parents] when they [their kids] were growing up?”“Many cases, children go home back and end up back on the streets”, she posited. |
