Needle work requires some concentration. Photo Today / Andrew Bishop
St. Maarten News – “The Community Outreach Mentorship and Empowerment Center has been helping seniors in their quest to become more productive in the community and in their work places,” said director Georgia Peterkin. The center opened its door in 2011 and started with a small number of people with an Acquiring Basic Competences (ABC) and literacy program that caters to the elderly and to those without an educational background.
“Visitors to the Come Center are not more exposed to the public is because everyone has his or her dignity and the center maintains that for them,” Peterkin said. “It takes a lot of courage for an adult to come out and say that they cannot read or write and they need help and willing to get the proper training.”
It is for this reason that their identity is protected and their names are not in the newspaper or any other media unless they desire to have it done. She explained that they are a charity based organization, an extension of the Thy Kingdom Come Ministry. “The word God says that we should be our brother’s keeper. What other way could we be our brothers’ keeper but by reaching out to the less fortunate and to those that are in need?”
“This is the focus of the Community Outreach Mentorship and Empowerment Center along with the president and the vice-president and all that are at the center,” Peterkin said. “We see the need in the workplaces where we see the need for persons to be educated. If they are not educated they cannot function effectively in the different areas of their employment.
Among the areas that the seniors are coached on are math’s, English, speech along with how to fill out a form, answering the telephone courteously, writing letters, applying for a job which is considered as basic stuff.
“The response for the program has been enormous and we are now looking forward to how we could expand because of space.” For the seniors program that is done each Wednesday is never below 20 persons.
The center accommodates different programs during the week such as the mentorship and consulting program, the soup program Friday, the breakfast program each Monday and the bread program where they collect bread from Le Sucre which has been a faithful sponsor to the COM Center.
Come Center is its brother’s keeper
