An adult education school has claimed the effects of September 11 could be behind a downturn in the number of corporate donations it receives every year.

Neletha Butterfield, who runs CARE Educational Centre, said last year the school received $27,000 from international businesses, which was about the norm. However, for the first six months of this year, CARE has received just $4,000 from the business sector, leading the school on a desperate search for more sponsors, particularly long-term donors.

Ms Butterfield said: "I don't know if it's got anything to do with September 11, but this year so far we have only had $4,000 from corporate sponsors. By usual standards, we would have had about $13,000. We always have community sponsors, which we are always very grateful to, but we also need corporate sponsors.

"What we are really looking for is a company to adopt us. It would make everything so much easier if we knew we definitely had financial help coming in at a set time every year. At the moment, we are doing everything we can to find new ways to find sponsorship."

CARE does receive quarterly funding from the National Training Board to the tune of $25,000.

However, that only pays towards the cost of those students who are studying the General Education Development (GED) exam. The NTB pays 50 percent of the enrolment costs, and the student must pay for the remainder. But there are many other classes which are not automatically paid for, and many other overheads, which is why outside funding and donations are vital.

Ms Butterfield said the school had an operating budget of $226,000 a year, with much of its expenditure going on salaries and rent.

But she said the school was also looking to replace some of its computer hardware. However, she said she hoped to see not only an increase in the number of adult students at the school from September, but also a rise in the number of corporate donors, with a new programme at the school aimed at teaching people to read.

She added: "Hopefully, in September, we will see an increase because we are planning to expand. We want to move across the hall into the neighbouring rooms, and that will be our reading programme for adults.

"It will be fully computerised and will encourage people to use the technology we will have available, while having an emphasis on reading.

"It will be called our REACH project (Reading Enables Adults to Climb Higher) and we have also been looking for funding for that, too. In the past, we have sometimes had difficulty in getting people to come out and say they can't read. But the idea of REACH is that it will be separate from the main part of the school so will be very private."

She said the main goal of the school was to improve not only people's academic standing, but also to improve their employability and life skills. That, she said, had to be important to employers.

And she said society needed to recognise that there were many people who, for some reason or another, needed this kind of assistance in an adult school but could not afford to pay for it. And she said in order to make sure Bermuda did not suffer, additional funding should be made available.

She added: "I would have liked by now for someone in the community to have adopted us.

"It takes $226,000 a year to run this programme, but there is a shortfall of $125,000. If we are not going to do something about it, then this country is at stake."

More on CARE: Page 6