THE Barbados Vagrants and Homeless Society will be taking bigger steps to ensure that it can purchase a new home in the year 2017.
President of the Barbados Vagrants and Homeless Society (BVHS), Kemar Saffrey, acknowledged the above in an interview with The Barbados Advocate.
“Next year, our goal will be to slow down with our rehabilitation and reintegration programme, because really and truly, we need the funding. We need a building for ourself and if we are taking all of our resources to rent out proprieties, then it is going to take us much longer to be able to buy the property that we need,” Saffrey indicated.
“[Therefore], what we are going to do is focus on a lot of advocacy and awareness next year, focus on buying that building. You are also going to see a lot of events coming off next year. We are trying to get a lot of major persons in island to be able to give us some charitable performances. Next year, we are really going to be pushing some major campaigns with the banks – Republic Bank and FirstCaribbean, as well as with Courts and Harris Paints Ltd. We are going to have some major programmes going, to make sure that we get close to buying that building or a building for the homeless in Bridgetown,” Saffrey further noted.
“We are looking good, but we just need to cut some expenses and put the money to that,” the BVHS President added.
When the BVHS announced its plans to purchase its own home earlier this year, Saffrey indicated that the Society had 380-plus persons on file and assisted, on average, a total of 70 persons on a day-to-day basis.
Saffrey noted then that given the space limitations at the BVHS’ present location on Tudor Street, Bridgetown, St. Michael, there was a need for the homeless society, which has been in existence for the past eight years, to have its own home so that it could spread its wings even further.
“We need to get a home (to better accommodate) the number of clients that we see and the number of activities that we do. Here is too small. We want to have our own training room, our own facilities, our own recreational room for homeless persons, so we can continue our work getting homeless persons off the street and back into society,” the BVHS President said. (RSM)
Section: