Vinnie, a Vienna sausage-shaped mascot, dances with students at the St Anne's Infant School during Grace Kitchen's 40th anniversary celebrations yesterday. GraceKennedy Ltd was also donating a refrigerator to the North Street school to help with their breakfast feeding programme. - Rudolph Brown/Chief Photographer

When guidance counsellor Angella Thompson joined the staff of St Anne's Infant School on North Street, downtown Kingston, she found that absenteeism and a lack of proper nutrition were two of the main problems affecting the students.

Without hesitation, Thompson joined forces with the teachers and principal to launch a breakfast and parenting programme to not only assist the students, but also to provide guidance to their parents.

"Based on the needs assessment that I did, I realised that one of the main reasons for students not attending school was the culture of their communities; there was not much emphasis placed on education," she said.

Parenting workshop

Of the 120 three to six-year-olds who attended St Anne's, only about 60 students would turn out for school on a typical Monday morning.

Thompson said close to 90 per cent of that number would arrive late, even though they all lived within walking distance of the school.

Thompson decided to organise a parenting workshop, where she invited parents from the community twice a month for instructional classes on parenting and counselling.

In addition to the workshop, the teachers also started a breakfast programme.

"We noticed that a lot of the students were coming out to school with no breakfast, and then for lunch, most of them would only have a 'bag juice'," Thompson said.

With assistance from Grace-Kennedy Ltd, the school is now able to provide each student with a hot meal every morning at 7:30, before classes begin.

Yesterday, GraceKennedy Ltd continued its commitment to the school and its students by donating a refrigerator to assist with the breakfast project.

Robert Walker of GraceKennedy said the company did not hesitate to lend a hand to St Anne's, because "no child should go hungry".

Marked improvement

Over the year, since the imple-mentation of the parenting and breakfast programmes, the guidance counsellor has not only noted a marked improvement in attendance, but also in punctuality.

"Since the introduction of the programme, attendance has gone up to about 80-90 students in class on a typical Monday morning, with far more students coming early," she said.

"So the breakfast programme definitely has been a motivating factor."

Behavioural change

Thompson, however, would love to see more parents coming out to the parenting workshops. "We (often have to) beg them, cajole them, bribe them to come out to the meetings," she said.

"It's been an uphill climb, but we are getting there, we will get there," she remarked.

Thompson, however, noted that despite the low attendance, there was an apparent improvement in the behaviour of those students whose parents attend the meetings.

In addition to an increase in attendance and punctuality, Thomp-son said there has also been an improvement in student participation in classes, as well as parent participation in school activities.

athaliah.reynolds@gleanerjm.com