Until recently, Venezuela child refugees and migrants in Trinidad and Tobago were barred from state-run schools. This year, a change in the law backed by the United Nations means that several dozen were able to benefit from formal education.
When 11-year-old Venezuelan refugee Astrid Saavedra walked into her fourth-grade classroom in Trinidad and Tobago for her first day of school in September, she was eager to begin lessons in her favourite subject, mathematics. But the prospect of teaching fellow students about her homeland Venezuela was equally exciting.
Astrid is one of the first refugee and migrant children from Venezuela to be allowed to enter the Trinidadian national public education system, following a change in the country’s immigration rules.
