CHASE Fund Provides Support For Adopt-A-Children’s-Home Initiative

The Culture, Health, Arts, Sports and Education (CHASE) Fund has extended support to the New Kingston Lions Club’s Adopt-A-Children’s-Home initiative with a provision of $1.3 million.

“We have five children’s homes that we are trying to support and two transitional living facilities. So, overall, it’s seven locations that we are working with,” Region Four Chairperson, Lion Elaine Robinson, told JIS News.

The facilities are St. Andrew Parish Church Home for Girls, Muirton Boys’ Home, Mustard Seed Communities, Transitional Living Facility (Lady Musgrave Road), Strathmore Gardens Children’s Home, Transitional Living Facility (Palmoral Avenue) and the Annie Dawson Home for Children.

“A number of children do not have any families to go to. They need some time to become independent and to find a job or get into a profession. It wasn’t until working closely with the homes that the New Kingston Club had connected with that I realised how vulnerable these children are,” Ms. Robinson said.

“If they are not properly prepared for life, these children can become the street people that we see on the side of the road or out in New Kingston somewhere down in the gully. I said how can we help this? I tried to engage the Lions Clubs to see if there was interest in us trying to work more closely with children’s homes,” she added.

Ms. Robinson noted that the effort resulted from the relationship that the New Kingston Lions Club had with the Child Protection and Family Services Agency (CPFSA).

She pointed out that after the initiative was conceptualised and accepted, they approached the CHASE Fund for assistance.

“I made a proposal to the CHASE Fund. CHASE was extremely supportive of the initiative and they ended up supporting everything that we asked for. We are still in the process of getting those presented, but we have done some of the presentations already,” Ms. Robinson said.

The objectives of the project include maintaining the children’s nutrition by assisting with food supplies when needed; supporting the education of the children by providing school supplies; and assisting the homes in ensuring that basic comforts, such as beds, linen, fans for cooling, are in place and appliances are functional.

Project Manager at the CHASE Fund, Latoya Aquart-Foster, said the Fund supports children’s homes as part of its mandate.

“We were happy to partner with the New Kingston Lions Club in the Adopt-A-Children’s-Home initiative, which allowed us to concentrate on the upgrade of the facilities with the assurance that the Lions Club would continue to provide consumables,” she noted.

To support the initiative by the New Kingston Lions Club, other clubs in Jamaica agreed to adopt children’s homes in an effort to assist this segment of the population.

Chair for Zone 4A, Dr. Peta-Gaye Chang, said five clubs participated in the project, with some clubs partnering to adopt a single establishment.

“The Lions Clubs of Mona and St. Andrew Central adopted the Annie Dawson Home for Girls, while the Spanish Town and South Central St. Catherine clubs adopted the Strathmore Gardens Children’s Home. St. Andrew Lions Club worked alongside the New Kingston Club, which is in 4B, to look at the St. Andrew Parish Church Home,” she noted.

Dr. Chang pointed out that the Strathmore Gardens Home received one mounted fan from both clubs.

“This is part of what CHASE provided. The Annie Dawson Home also received a laptop designed to help a visually impaired young lady as she prepares to head out into the working world and that was done by St. Andrew Central. The Lions Club of Mona also gave some books for the visually impaired,” she noted.

President of the Lions Club of Mona, Stanley Smellie, told JIS News that the Annie Dawson Home accommodates 25 girls from three to 18 years old.

“Many of these girls have special needs, whether it be a mental disability or visual impairment. The vision of the home is about creating a safe nurturing environment for children while identifying and addressing the special needs, skills and talents. At the Lions Club of Mona, we thought this aligned with our vision of caring for children,” he said.

The CHASE Fund has committed to providing financial assistance to acquire items needed in the identified homes to improve the state of living for the children and residents, while the Lions Clubs, through their own fund-raising efforts, will provide the homes, on an ongoing basis, with food items, school supplies, sanitary products, personal hygiene products and toiletries.