71 single mothers honoured by Reg 5 Welfare Department

– as school attendances improve, parents’ involvement in PTA activity increases

Seventy-one single mothers who have been playing an active role in their child’s schooling, were recognised for the contribution they have made over the past year to the development of their child and the child’s peers.

The recognition awards were part of the Region Five (Mahaica-Berbice) Education Ministry’s Welfare Department’s Mother’s Day activities.
The annual event aims to award the best parent in each of the region’s 71 schools.
Coordinator of the event, Gloria Davidson-James, explained that the programme was introduced across the region in 2018, to involve parents in their children’s lives.
The programme, called ‘Mother Empowerment Session’, is a mother’s forum that empowers mothers, for which they are honoured. This year it was held under the theme, ‘Creating a million ways to be a good mother in a world where you can’t be perfect.”
According to the coordinator, since its inception, the programme has reaped tremendous success, with school attendances improving and parents’ involvement in PTA activity increasing.
“Our objectives for this programme are to foster parental involvement, and we are seeing that; and building relationships with parents, especially the mothers that we are looking at… We are building relationships with the parents – and not only them, with the community, so that when we go out there and if there is a situation where children are not attending school or children are in difficult circumstances, they would reach out to the school’s welfare section and we will help them where we can.”
For parents, there is an incentive to participate in the programme apart from their child’s improved performance at school; they have the bragging rights of being the best parent in the school.
Davidson-James explained that certain criteria must be met before winners are chosen.
“Their children must do all the assignments and finish them on time. They must be involved in other children’s lives. They must be an inspiration to other parents – and that is just to name a few,” she explained.
“We see at many schools, if students are absent, it would only be when they are sick, or if they are out of the area at Bath. We used to have poor attendance, not only at the primary, but with the children within communities; it was similar in some other areas within the region. We used to have poor attendance at Belladrum and other places, but we have seen with this programme, and with the cash grant and all the other developments, we are seeing improvement in our attendance,” she said.
One single parent, Melissa McAllmont, a mother of three, recalled her inspiration through the programme.
“This programme has inspired me for many years; with the encouragement and advice from the welfare officers. They encouraged me to go back to school, and I went back to school and wrote CXC (Caribbean Examinations Council), and I was successful, and from there, with their guidance and encouragement, I applied for a job and now I am a trained teacher and a student at the University of Guyana (UG),” McAllmont revealed.