Cudjoes Hill School
Cudjoes Hill School is located in rural St. Catherine.
We provided the funds for the purchase and installation of several windows and doors to the Cudjoes Hill School building in rural St. Catherine.
Ebony Vale Infant School
We provided funds to construct two bathrooms at Ebony Vale Infant Schoolin Spanish Town. The school was going to be closed by the government due to the lack of these facilities.
Friendship Primary School
Friendship Primary School is located at Fairfield Road, in Spanish Town, St. Catherine. The school is located in the heart of several depressed areas, and is also bordered by an irrigation canal and swampy lands.
Currently, the school population has leveled off to approximately 1,900 students with 59 teachers. The school works on a shift system with one to thirty-five teacher pupil ratios. The morning shift operates from 7AM to 12:00 Noon, and the afternoon shift starts from 12:10 to 5:00 PM.
Jamaica YES has supported a breakfast program at Friendship Primary since 2007.This program provides breakfast 2 days a month for up to 250 children. The children are fed meals consisting of a combination of oats porridge, calaloo, crackers, Nesquik, cheese sandwich, frankfurters, milo, eggs and fried
Manchester High School
Manchester High School (MHS), with a student population of 1,300 boys and girls, is nestled in the hills of Mandeville, the capital of Manchester. Mandeville is the 3rd most populous city in Jamaica but it is still known as “country”. It is Beresford Clarke’s, Jamaica YES’ treasurer, alma mater. Working for a technology company, Beresford would see the purchasing of new computers occur every three to four years as the equipment was refreshed.
Beresford contacted Donovan Mayne, the President of the MHS alumni association, and asked if they needed computers at the high school. His answer was a resounding YES! Beresford then contacted Dawn Renwick and asked whether or not EDS, the company she works for, had any computers they were throwing out. Timing is everything. They did. EDS sold (for a nominal amount) 8 CPUs and 12 monitors to Dawn.
Then came the packaging of the computers. Beresford, a man of patience, would check the loading docks at T.I., the company he works for, daily for boxes and packing material being tossed out after new computers arrived. In no time he collected enough.
Next step … shipping. How do you get 8 CPUs and 12 monitors to Jamaica for pennies? Beresford, a man with many contacts, knew someone who worked at Fedex. This was during the time of Ivan the hurricane, when charity abounded at the shipping company. They agreed to ship all the computers, a $5000 cost, for free.
The computers arrived safely in Jamaica and cleared customs – a feat in and of itself. Now, instead of being scrap metal, they are being used in the computer lab by the boys and girls of Manchester High
Munro College High School
In 2006, Hurricane Andrew destroyed the library at Munro College High School. Jamaica YES held a book drive here in Dallas and collected books and magazines to replace some of the destroyed books.We shipped, via Federal Express who kindly donated the shipping costs, 24 boxes of books to Munro.
Pratville Primary School
Jamaica YES shipped six laptops to Pratville Primary School. Pratville is a rural district in Southern Manchester, Jamaica. The school is located in a farming community. The laptops are being used as a tool to familiarize the students with computers and also as a mean to help bridge the information highway gap that exist between third world rural areas and the more urbanized world. The principal reported that it has also served to peak the children’s interest in reading more, because they get to do their work on a computer.
St. Anne Primary School
Jamaica YES worked with the Rotary Club of Oxford, Michigan and the Rotary Club of Kingston to fund a breakfast program at St. Anne’s Primary Schoollocated in Denham Town, Kingston. The school serves the Denham Town and Tivoli Garden communities. The program provides breakfast for over one hundred children.
St. Theresa Basic School
St.Theresa’s Basic School is located in Annotto Bay which is a small town on the north coast of Jamaica. Annotto Bay is in the parish of St. Mary – the poorest parish in Jamaica. The school has been in existence for about 20 years and is housed in a former church building. The building itself is 75 years old.
Currently, 45 children ages from 2 to 6 years old attend the school. Instruction and care for the children are the responsibility of the of the 3 teachers who work there.
Miss Sharon Martin has 15 three year old children in her class. She is not eligible for government funding so she depends on school fees from the children for her salary. She is an excellent teacher and started with the school in Sept of 2004.
Mrs. Dolsada Nolan teaches 17 four year olds and has been at the school since 1999. She receives some salary from the school but most of it comes from the Ministry of Education (Early Childhood).
Miss Lola Mendez is the principal and also teaches about 17 five year old students. She has been at the school since January 2002. She receives some salary from the school but most from the Ministry of Education.
The students attending the school are mostly poor and the parents have difficulty coming up with the school fees. However, we could not afford to operate the school without the school fees so we insist as much as we can on receiving the fees. Students must pay the equivalent of 50 cents US per day for their lunch. This is subsidized with occasional food donations from the Ministry of Education and Food for the Poor organization and a grant from the church.
Some children come to school without breakfast and are thus not in the mental or physical frame of mind to learn. As a result of assistance from Jamaica YES, all the children have the opportunity to come to school early and receive a nourishing breakfast.
