Helping persons in her community is a way of life for Olive Parkins-Smith, who has been serving the Diaspora in Canada over several years. Born in Jamaica, she migrated to Canada in 1975 where she began giving back and assisting her fellow Jamaicans. Mrs. Parkins-Smith said her service to community began at the tender age of 18 years when she...

Jamaican-born Sandra Samuels, the first black person to become Mayor of Wolverhampton, in the United Kingdom (UK), is proudly carrying the flag of her native country. Having served in the medical field as a nurse for 40 years, Councillor Samuels saw, first-hand, the gap in political representation for minorities and entered the political arena in 1998 and was elected a...

Jamaica has been privileged to be graced by the presence of Her Majesty The Queen on six occasions during her reign, which ended on September 8, when she demised. The Queen, along with her husband, the late Duke of Edinburgh, initially visited the island in 1953, following her Coronation the previous year. She was the first reigning Sovereign to visit...

Jamaica’s Honorary Consul in Atlanta, Georgia, Dr. Elaine Grant-Bryan, has received the United States (US) Presidential ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’. The award, signed by President Joe Biden, is in recognition of her thousands of hours of service to the Jamaican diaspora, the Caribbean and the US. She has also received the President’s Volunteer Service Gold Award, a civil award established by...

The Jamaica Special Economic Zone Authority (JSEZA) is harnessing collaboration in hopes of taking the Jamaican culture and creative industry to the Middle East market. Representatives of JSEZA are in Dubai as part of the Jamaican delegation participating in the six-month World Expo 2020 Dubai, securing business, trade and investment opportunities for the country. JSEZA’s Manager, Business Facilitation and Acceleration...

William Fullerton received an urgent call from his niece in Jamaica. She needed extra help with her mathematics. Mr. Fullerton, a trained maths teacher living in the Middle East, quickly jumped to her assistance. Not long after, he began offering maths lessons online to his niece, she asked if he would assist her friends as well. “And so I started...

Jamaica has been punching above its weight at World Expo 2020 Dubai, the six-month-long expo that got under way on October 1, 2021 and has seen an impressive 10 million visitors up to mid-January 2022. Taking advantage of its strategic location in the mobility area of the exposition grounds, Jamaica has attracted approximately one per cent of the total Expo...

Kemar Cummings, a Jamaican writer and poet living in Australia, continues to participate in and contribute to the literary works of his homeland. He recently won three medals in the 2021 Jamaica Cultural Development Commission (JCDC) Creative Writing Competition. At the virtual awards ceremony held on November 20, Mr. Cummings received gold medals for his poems Brother and Negro Aroused....

The Green Block Foundation, established by three Jamaicans living in Atlanta, Georgia in the United States (US), is providing much-needed support to schools in the parishes of Portland and St. Thomas where its founders grew up. Several institutions located in communities across the two parishes have received educational supplies and food products from the Foundation to enable them to navigate...