National Prayer Breakfast to Benefit ‘Educate to Elevate’ Community Outreach

The Educate to Elevate community outreach programme, a back-to-school initiative of the Hope Gospel Assembly, will be the beneficiary of the proceeds from the 44th staging of the National Leadership Prayer Breakfast (NLPB).

This was disclosed by Secretary, NLPB, Rev. Major (Ret’d) Canute Chambers, at a press briefing held on Thursday (January 11) at the Victoria Mutual Group Training Room, Half-Way Tree Road in Kingston.

“It caters to the needy students in our inner-city communities,” Rev. Chambers said.

The NLPB will be held on Thursday (January 18), at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel in New Kingston starting at 7:30 a.m., under the theme ‘Choose Hope: Arise and Build’.

Rev. Chambers said the event will cater to 300 guests and will be a hybrid affair, with in-person gathering as well as livestreaming on various social media platforms.

The speakers for this year will be sixth-form student at Campion College, Kashief Barton, and Pastor of the First Missionary Church, Rev. Omar Morrison.

Chairman of the NLPB Committee, Rev. Sam McCook, noted that while the conditions that gave rise to the breakfast in the early days are, fortunately, not the same today, the need for the event continues.

He noted that the breakfast is a nonpartisan, non-governmental and non-denominational event “which means that what we do is really being done by persons who have a heart for our mission and a heart for the nation”.

“We keep doing it because every society needs those times when we come together and put aside all labels and our titles and just celebrate who we are as a people, celebrate what is good about us, lament what is bad together, and then recommit to becoming the best that we can be,” he said.

“So, the breakfast provides that space at the start of the year when our leaders can come together, celebrate the accomplishments of the year… lament those challenges that continue to bedevil our life, but also to pray with each other and to pray for each other,” he added.

The Chairman pointed out that the NLPB is aware of the challenges that the nation faces but is equally mindful that there are resources and “an energy about us as Jamaican people that will not roll over and die”.

“We are appealing to that instinct in us to say, let us choose hope despite the darkness, in spite of the naysayers. Whether it’s in our personal lives, the challenges we face in our families, in our communities or as a nation, we always have a choice. We choose to assert that with God’s help we can be better, and our nation can be better,” Rev. McCook said.

“We hope that that is the message that the breakfast will communicate to the country as we face what will be a challenging year, but we face it with hope and with the instinct to arise and to build,” he added.

In the meantime, President and Chief Executive Officer, Victoria Mutual Group, Courtney Campbell, said the entity continues to support the NLPB “because we know first-hand the value and potency of faith and prayer. We are in the business of transforming lives, but we cannot do it alone”.

“We have been led by God throughout our history, and He has been faithful in good times and bad. We are driven to uplift our Jamaican and Caribbean people and we choose hope as we execute the work needed to change lives, businesses, and communities for the better,” he added.

Since 1981, the National Leadership Prayer Breakfast Committee has steered the initiative to promote unity and peace by bringing together the nation’s leaders in a day of prayer.

Proceeds from the event are donated to a selected local charity each year.

The event’s primary title sponsor is the VM Group.