Paredos in need of more funds, volunteers

More money and volunteers are among the greatest needs of PAREDOS (Parent Education for Development in Barbados).

This is according to its President, Leroy Inniss, who spoke with The Barbados Advocate after a recent Appreciation Ceremony at their Perry Gap, St. Michael headquarters.

Our needs are “chiefly financial because it would allow us to employ more counsellors. That is the major thing that we need right now. To be able to employ more counsellors so that we can do a greater amount of counselling.”

He said that currently their only source of income is their daycare centre.

“We have no steady income aside from the money from our daycare centre and what comes in from donors in addition to our fund-raising efforts. So when we have our fund-raising efforts, we have to make sure that we sell the tickets, get people on board etc. We used to have a fund-raising event called, ‘Who says Bajan Men Can’t Cook.’ This…event was novel at the time and we got money from that.”

Treasurer Roglyn Hinds agreed, explaining that all of their other services are offered at no charge. “All of our services are free... and we would love to be able to continue so we need as much a help as we can. We have four staff members...We have a counsellor…we have the Director who is responsible for the school and the resource centre; we have a receptionist; and we have an accounts person. So we thrive on volunteers; we could not succeed without volunteers.

“…We do a radio programme once a week. We do a lot of outreach programmes in the community. So we go to community centres, we go to schools, we go to whoever needs us, whether it is a church, whatever; they come in and ask or we go out and do whatever work that they need us to do, mainly in parenting. So yes, volunteers, we could never have sufficient,” he stressed.

The daycare centre at PAREDOS currently has 136 children and they admit children from three months to four years old.

PAREDOS also keeps food at their headquarters because some of the families who utilise their services cannot afford to purchase it on their own.