The Tribune

By ALESHA CADET

Tribune Features Reporter

acadet@tribunemedia.net

A NEW facility, which currently being renovated, will increase educational offerings and more classroom facilities for teenage mothers attending the PACE Foundation. The organisation is hoping to raise a final $300,000 to complete the facility as soon as possible.

The PACE Foundation is a group of concerned citizens who seek to compliment the efforts of the PACE Programme, which works with teenage mothers to prepare them for motherhood.

PACE president Sonia Brown updated the public at a press conference last week on where the foundation currently is with trying to complete the PACE building.

In 2009, the organisation purchased a building on East Street through the assistance of the Bahamas Development Bank.

“We have been raising funds for about nine years now and it has been a bit of a challenge because not that many people are aware of the programme, even though it has been around for over 40 years,” said Ms Brown.

“We just thought that because we have been raising funds for a while and we are not quite where we want to be, we would just give an update. And then we wanted to share with the public the plans that we have developed for the building and also to talk about a fundraiser that the Sandals Foundation is hosting,” said Ms Brown.

In an effort to raise $300,000 to begin renovations on this new school building, which is expected to educate a portion of the country’s more than 600 teenage mothers, PACE, along with the Sandals Foundation, recently hosted a fundraising ball last week Saturday at the resort.

Those who attended were asked to donate whatever they could to assist. Ms Brown said the event was intended to be a casual ball, where members of PACE spoke to attendees about the foundation and its work.

“PACE principal Jackie Knowles regularly goes around to any school that will take her and talks about what PACE is about. She does it to send the message out about prevention. It is a dual thing: letting people know what we are doing and also using the knowledge that we have gained from some of the girls who have passed through the PACE programme to try to promote prevention,” said Ms Brown.

Ms Brown said since 2009, PACE has successfully been able to meet its mortgage payments for the new building on East Street. “We need about $300,000 to get into phase one of the building. I think we are ten per cent of the way there in terms of funds raised,” she said.

“We are actually back at the Bahamas Development Bank, trying to refinance and in addition to that we just continue to fund raise because we want to reduce our borrowings as much as possible,” said Ms Brown.

Ms Brown said all students deserve an equal education, and the new building will provide much more availability.

“I always like to tell people that we have to be very thankful first of all for the wider brethren assemblies in the Bahamas, because they have been allowing the girls to use the Central Gospel Chapel Sunday school room on Dowdeswell Street for over 20 years. We don’t pay rent; the government gave them a small stipend to just kind of help, but there is no way that we can repay them for all that they have done. We need to try to ensure that while the students are at PACE, they get an education that is as equal as possible to the education that is available in the government school system,” said Ms Brown.

She said the new building will provide a nursery on an emergency basis for students who do not having the means for nursery care.

“In some cases if they have to decide between nursery care and coming to school then they are not going to come to school. That is one of the things

that we will be able to add in phase one of the building. We would also be able to add a proper food and nutrition and science lab in addition to the classrooms, and expand the computer lab and everything else that we are doing,” said Ms Brown.

“There is no point in trying to punish them because they are pregnant,” Ms Brown said. “We would only be punishing ourselves. We want to make sure that their education is not interrupted. We had girls getting five and seven BGCSEs and going on to the College of the Bahamas and doing quite well,” she said.

Ms Brown said the move into the new building depends on fundraising. “If we are able to keep up the fund raising level that we have been doing right now we are probably looking at another five or seven years down the road. If we are able to refinance our mortgage, we could move in next year. It is just a matter of how quickly you can get the money in,” she said.