RESIDENTS of Parika Backdam, East Bank Essequibo, yesterday said they will come together and assist the parents of the two children, who perished on Saturday while swimming in a drainage canal near their home.
Saddened villagers had taken the couple and their two surviving children into their home yesterday when the Guyana Chronicle visited.
They said they will foot the cost for the funeral of the children and the church they attended will also pitch in and assist.
Collectively the residents said they will help because they are aware of the struggles of the couple, who moved to the area about five years ago.
Elizabeth Francis, her husband, Lorenzo Torres, and their four children left Moruca, North West District, Region One (Barima-Waini) and settled in the Parika community where Torres secured a job as a farm hand with a resident, who operates a large scale farming business.
They were given a cottage to live in at Parika Backdam and from that time they got along well with their neighbours.

As the news of the missing children got around the community, residents banded themselves together and dived into the drainage canal and found the bodies of Malissa, 8, and her brother Miron, 6.
They tried artificial respiration on the bodies, but the children were already dead.
Residents told the Guyana Chronicle yesterday that it’s a shame the police never came to the village even after they were summoned to collect the bodies of the children. Rather, they sent the funeral parlour vehicle to transport them.
They added that the police, both at Leonora and Parika Police Stations, told them that they had no vehicles to visit the area.
The children will be buried tomorrow.
A post mortem was performed on the bodies yesterday, but the results were not available up to press time.
Their grieving mother, Elizabeth Francis, 38, told this newspaper that the children left home undetected while she was inside the house tending to her three-month-old baby girl, who has a cold.
She said that within a few minutes she went inside the house and by the time she turned around in search of the children they were gone.
The children were missed at about 18:30hrs and their bodies were found at about 19:30hrs.
According to the mother, Malissa could swim well but her brother could not, and it is believed he encountered difficulties in the water and his sister went to assist him and they both drowned.