Save the children
MORE than 2000 children across the country is expecting assistance from Save the Children Fiji.
In an interview with this newspaper last week, SCF chief executive officer Shairana Ali said the process would be completed by next week.
"It's a lot of application. We have to do our vetting process, so that we know children who are in school and enrolled for this year," she told this newspaper.
"We have started with our distribution. We are expected to complete with the distribution in the central and western division by Saturday (last week).
"It's going to take a while in the northern division and we expect it to be completed by Wednesday(today).
According to Ms Ali, more than 800 applications were received from the northern divi- sion and nearby smaller islands, another 800 from the central division while around 200 applications were received from the western division.
"We are trying our best to help as many children as we can so that children can go back to school with the smile on their face.
"We can see that parents are happy when they receive stationery items.
When quizzed about assistance from the government, Ms Ali said there was no educational assistance.
"But we work closely with the Ministry of Education in getting referrals from them," he said.
"The government has subsidies with bus fares and made education free but it is still a lot of burden for parents to purchase their uniform, shoes and many others.
"This is some of our ways of subsidizing it." The organization is also assisting children affected by Tropical Cyclone Sarai.
Meanwhile, a total of 1520 children were assisted last year