Minister for Commerce, Manufacturing, Business Development, Cooperatives, and Consumer Affairs and parliamentary representative for Soufriere/Fond St. Jacques Emma Hippolyte has urged parents in her constituency to instill spirituality in their children and put God first.
The minister’s comments came last week during a pre-cabinet press briefing, as she spoke on Government support for parents under the school assistance programme.
Minister Hippolyte said the programme distributed cheques to over two hundred parents in her constituency.
Parents with one child received EC$300, two EC$500, and three children and more EC$700.
“The issue of education is critical for us, it is through education that we are going to move our people from poverty,” Hippolyte said.
“But in my conversation with the parents I took a moment to exhort them to remind them that the Government is doing all of this, putting the environment in place for our children to learn, but there is also another part to that, want is happening in our homes,” she went on to say.
“Our parents must try to discipline and bring spirituality in the homes, because if it is not in the home, then it becomes a challenge in the school system, because by the time the children get on to the school system, you have already shaped them,” Hippolyte observed.
” Their little minds and brains are already shaped in one direction, so we have to do a lot more work within the homes to change what is happening on the ground, because when your mind is shaped properly, you do not participate in the crime outside,” Hippolyte said.The Soufriere/Fond St. Jacques MP wished her constituents and Saint Lucia well, adding, “I want to say, always put God first.”
