SAMIRAH Gobin, a beneficiary of the Central Islamic Organisation of Guyana (CIOG) Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) programme, has been recognised for her outstanding performance at this year’s Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations.

The Al-Gazali Islamic Academy (AIA) student excelled in 13 subjects, CIOG said in a press release issued on Friday.

The OVC programme assists children under the age of 16 with financial resources for their educational and social needs, in an effort to ensure their future success and growth. Each child receives school uniforms, textbooks, medical examination, and financial help for extra lessons and examination fees, as well as a monthly stipend.

With its donors and supporters continuing to champion the cause of orphans and vulnerable children, the programme currently provides financial assistance to over 500 children, CIOG General Manager, Shameena Haniff said.

Haniff, in a recent interview with this publication, disclosed that the initiative, which was launched in 1993, has seen a significant and continued growth in the number of children catered for yearly.
She noted that the initiative was launched with just 13 children as beneficiaries.

CONTINUOUS HELP
Haniff said that although children no longer benefit from the programme when they reach the age of 16, the organisation, in most cases, continues to support some of them to ensure that they have access to resources that would enable them to benefit from a university education.

“The programme is up to when they finish writing CXC, so we see them up to CXC but even though there are some of them with potential or even those who don’t have the potential, we still try to work with them after they finish writing CXC. The whole idea of the programme is for them to be self-sufficient, so we take them up to that level, and, in a lot of cases, we end up getting scholarships for them, so they can end up going to university,” Haniff added.

She also noted that CIOG works to ensure that those students who do not wish to go to a university are sent to other tertiary institutions to learn a trade so that they can earn.
The programme, according to Haniff, has had a major impact and has been ‘churning out’ adults in every profession, including teachers, lawyers, and doctors.

“Seeing how well children in the OVC programme have grown is pretty amazing because some children would have been in this programme as young as six months old and it would have carried them through until they are a good 17 or 18 years old. We get to help them in a way that was necessary for them to excel and understand that they can achieve whatever they want, it’s pretty amazing.”

Meanwhile, Al-Gazali Islamic Academy, which accommodates more than 40 per cent of students from the OVC initiative, scored 100 per cent pass rates at the CSEC examinations.
Aside from Gobin, the school’s other top performers are Takiyyah Ali, Adbul Jabar and Abdullah Edun with nine subjects each and Natalia Maraj with eight subjects.