Philipsburg:--- Last week the Lion's Club of St Maarten presented the White and Yellow Cross Foundation with a check to support the foundation's latest project.In September 2009 a group of 18 students started with the SBO Nursing Assistant Course level 2 at the Sundial School. This course is organized by SVOBE, under supervision of IFE Curacao (the Nursing School). The first block of the course consisted of theoretical hours and was completed successfully in December. At present the students have started their practical period, consisting of 4 days of traineeship per week at the White and Yellow Cross Foundation or the SMMC and 1 day theory at the Sundial School. The school fee has been kept very low by SVOBE to enable the students to take part in this two-year course. Books and uniforms are provided to the students free of charge. This resulted in a very high number of registrations and a full class.
During job training the SBO students do not receive any salary or other income and health care organizations would like to compensate these students with a small training fee. However, the WYCF already has financial deficits and difficulty to cover its basic operations, leaving no monies to spare for such a job training compensation. Therefore Bregje Boetekees-van't Hof, Operations Manager of the WYCF decided to approach service clubs to consider sponsoring some of these students by paying their job training fee. The Lion's Club was the first to be contacted and immediately responded positive. To sponsor and "adopt" several local students to obtain a diploma in nursing appealed very much to them and they did not hesitate to participate.
The WYCF and SVOBE hope that other service clubs, organizations and businesses will join this project and assist with this worthwhile cause. The total amount collected so far for this project is $ 3.500 and to complete it another $ 3.700 is needed.
