The Tribune

THE Zonta Club of New Providence is looking to raise much-needed funds to assist in the construction of the country’s first transition home at the Ranfurly Home for Children.

On Saturday, February 4, the club is hosting a ‘Tapas n’ Jazz’ event at the Sapodilla restaurant, West Bay Street, with the venue transformed into a jazz garden as premier jazz artists in the country take to the stage to help generate much needed funds to help get the non-profit children’s home further to their target of building transition homes.

Proceeds will also go towards Zonta Club of New Providence’s annual programme that equips unemployed women with work skills to help them get back into the working world.

“This fundraiser will be a lovely evening of fun, food and live entertainment that will benefit our Workforce Readiness Programme and the Ranfurly’s Transition Home,” said club President Claudine Farquharson. “One of the projects envisioned by this club is that of a transition or halfway home for women and young girls. While this is still a vision, in the interim, we have an opportunity to partner with the Ranfurly as they work to construct such a home for young adults. The transition home will be used to house young ladies in separate quarters from young men as they prepare to successfully transition and integrate into the wider society.”

Transition homes are needed for children who would have lived in the Ranfurly Home but have to move out of the Home as they come of age.

President of the Ranfurly Home, Alexandra Maillis-Lynch, said the home was important because many children who pass through the doors of the Ranfurly do not have the back-up of family and security to help them better ease into adulthood.

“At 18 they are required to leave home care,” she said. “If they are one of the children who don’t have a mentor that can financially support them, then they’re on their own. It hasn’t been good in the past and kids have fallen away to bad influences. This home would give them that stopgap for two years where they would abide by certain rules that would go with the home and they will learn what it is to be an adult in the right situations that allows them to feel that they’re a part of a family.”

Artwork from the children living at the Ranfurly Home will also be on sale at the ‘Tapas n’ Jazz’ event, which starts at 7 pm. Tickets are available at Physiocare, Mackey Street.