FEED OUR POOR!

Making a Difference…

The Life-Saving Impact of Friends.

Once one leaves the coastal resort regions of Jamaica, one begins to penetrate both the interior and the hills of the Island Nation; one will find that most of the average Jamaican families, in both rural and urban regions, work in the informal economy of Jamaica. They engage their little side, casual jobs as temporary day laborers in domestic work, tourism-related work, etc., wherever they can. With their meager earnings of a few dollars a day (usually between $20US and $25US a day), and after taking into consideration other living expense needs, they will buy with their remaining pennies a little rice, beans, and when affordable, a little tin of mackerel.

The Friends of the Diocese are veritable lifesavers for hundreds of families seeking food and hygiene packages to meet basic human needs for themselves and, more importantly, their precious children. Donations from Friends enabled the Diocese to distribute thousands of crucial care packages and helped the Diocese serve two hundred plus hot meals, a couple of days a week, to the homeless and unemployed on the streets of Montego Bay.

Many, but not all, of the families have informal job opportunities. But today, the issue that these families face is the inflationary cost of food. With inflation, their small daily earnings have not increased; therefore, their buying power has significantly reduced.

It is exceedingly difficult for the lower-income earners in Jamaica. They struggle!

And so, once again, with current inflation rates, these families line up at the Cathedral, parishes, and missions, pleading again for a helping hand with supplemental nutrition and hygiene products for their precious children. Friends have been an enormous blessing for these poor and often homeless Jamaicans!

FRIENDS enable the Diocese to buy alternate forms of nutrition as a much-needed supplement. Canned proteins are incredibly crucial. Cooking oil, cornmeal, individual hygiene products, etc., are all gifted by the generosity of personal Friends of the Diocese.

Unfortunately, some still go without; therefore, we encourage you to become a FRIEND of these beautiful families!

Friends Bless Families with Dignified and Humane Housing

Most families in the hills of Jamaica and destitute urban regions live in shack homes constructed with rusted corrugated zinc, dry rotted lumber, torn tarp, and plastic. In foul weather, especially when tropical storms visit, these families often find themselves drenched and sometimes flooded. Tropical weather systems often twist, bend, and sometimes collapse their little shack homes. They are not sheltered from the elements and rodents in the best weather conditions.

Friends of the Diocese have become a massive blessing by embracing many of these families. Their solidarity has enabled the Diocese to buy zinc, lumber, cement, and other building materials (when those materials are unavailable from a donor organization) to make those shack homes a tad more dignified and humane for these beautiful families. Friends also graciously gift the cost of the skilled labor needed to upgrade those shanties.

Friends have built, and continue to build, beautiful, simple, and colorful little cottage homes for needy families. But, with land title complications in Jamaica, can only help those with title to the land they live on. So many of our poor live on land that is not theirs. Therefore, Friends of the Diocese have stepped in to help touch and transform the lives of these families that live in squalor through no fault of their own. And what a blessing these Friends are! But so many more await that transformation.

And so, to touch and transform the lives of these awaiting families, to help restore a shattered home to some semblance of security and livability for a needy family. Please help us and become a Friend, DONATE TODAY!