Canaan High School receives food dehydrator
It probably looks like a piece of office equipment, but the food dehydrator is really what its name reflects. The equipment was donated to the students at Canaan Seventh Day Adventist High School on Coney Drive which will compliment the school’s food and nutrition programme. The gift came from businessman, Roger Espejo who is also seeking a Councilor seat on the UDP ticket. And while the news could not have been more timely for him coming just before the City Council elections, Espejo says it’s an initiative he started lobbying for since mid-2008. Meanwhile, Canaan High’s Principal, Enid Oshon, says the gift, however small it may seem, will go a long way in helping the students.
Roger Espejo, Businessman
“Myself and some of the councilor candidates were brainstorming on social idea so to speak one day and we decided that a feeding programme at a primary school level would have been something very needed. Now, yes Canaan is not a primary school, it’s a high school but we’ve decided based on schools that have good food and nutrition programmes, we were told that Canaan has a very good programme and that’s why we’ve put them at the stewardship so to speak. We’ve put the dehydrator in their hands to experiment to develop food programmes that we can maybe later on take to primary schools.”
Marion Ali
“And while you said you’d like to develop it further to take to primary schools, if you’re not elected as a councilor then how do you intend to do this? Is it a personal initiative? And were you not running for office, would you still be doing this?”
Roger Espejo
“Absolutely, like I’ve been telling members of the media, this was something that was planned way before this election. I for example, brought with me one of the invoices which I happened to find in one of the manuals which dates back to some time last summer. So it’s from then that I had been looking into this. It’s really a mere coincidence and I can tell you that it’s a mere coincidence that it’s at this junction in time that we’re making this donation but it really is completely separate and segregated from the politics we have ahead of us.”
Enid Oshon, Principal, Canaan High School
“This is only an addition to our food and nutrition equipment that we have in there. The students will be able to apply the knowledge that they gain in the course to the use of this machine in the fruits that we use everyday and the vegetables and so on. And we’re even thinking of using it like a little income-generating project on campus where we could generate some income to enhance the cooking lab some more by getting little things that they need on a daily basis.”
The food dehydrator works with heat and air to dehydrate just about anything that is consumed. Its value is around a thousand dollars.
