GUYANA’S flagship football team, the Golden Jaguars is not all about playing football but there is a humanitarian side to the team that has brought this nation tremendous glory in the foot-balling world.

Yesterday, the humanitarian side of the team was in full flow when Technical Director Claude Bolton along with three players, Christopher Nurse, Vurlon Mills and Daniel Wilson held an interactive session with children of the Ruimveldt Children Aid Centre (RCAC).
Organised by Normalisation Committee Member Stuart May, the 45-minute session saw the children go through a number of fun drills led by TD Bolton.
May said that the session forms part of the Golden Jaguars Community Outreach Programme with the aim of pushing the excitement of football though the children as well as some of the disciplines in life through it.
“You can’t expect to become a good footballer unless you practise, unless you train and hopefully help with the idea of nutrition from an early age. If you want to be successful, here are the role models, here are the Golden Jaguars. They can watch them train; they can see how they do it and start transferring some of these disciplines to their other aspects of life.”
May also noted that educational pursuits in life also need a high level of discipline being practised by the kids in order for them to succeed. He pointed out that the session was also designed to help the children understand that they too can achieve, regardless of the background they have come from.
“We want to give them the focus to realise that they are no different and that all of us started somewhere and came up through sport, business or whatever but you have to practise what you do, you have to pay attention.”
He opined that sleep is vital for development noting that all the various computer games around including xbox can be a distraction, explaining that you have to take care of yourself in order to attain your goals.
Another Normalisation Committee Member, Dr Karen Pilgrim was also on hand to support the initiative.
Nurse encouraged the children to be positive and to never let anyone tell them they cannot achieve what they want to in life, noting that the Golden Jaguars are all Ambassadors for Guyana which they represent throughout the world.
The Ruimveldt Children Aid Centre is an after-school centre that provides for the needs of the kids drawn from the Ruimveldt, Alesander Village and its environs.
Vice-president, Ms Ismay Murray noted that they have about six programmes that they do at the facility including a feeding exercise every day, recreation on Fridays, psychosocial counselling, literacy and numeracy daily, religious education on Sundays, dancing and music where they kids are benefiting from steel pan and guitar lessons compliments of the Tina Insanally Foundation.
Murray noted that they strive to work with the kids in the areas in which they are gifted, encouraging them to be the best they can be.
“Next month we will be starting a tiling programme for the women in the area because we have a lot of single parents in the catchment areas and we want to teach them to become independent and this would be sponsored by GT&T.”
On a daily basis, the Runmveldt Children Aid Centre looks after 35 to50 children and depends on donations from organisations and members of the public and overseas in order to sustain the centre.
Persons desirous of contributing to the centre can do so at their Ruimveldt location through their Administrative Assistant, Ms Gloria Sagon or on Tel. 227-2092.