Food For The Poor, Russian Youth Group Help Jamaica's Needy During Christmas Week
Food For The Poor and a Russian youth group are painting homes of poor Jamaicans and visit slums, orphanages, and poor villages in Jamaica, the week prior to Christmas.
Food For The Poor and a Russian youth group are painting homes of poor Jamaicans and visit slums, orphanages, and poor villages in Jamaica, the week prior to Christmas.
The youth group from The Lord is Alive Mission in Sacramento, Calif., traveled to Kingston, Jamaica Dec. 19 - Dec.23 to paint the five homes that they had raised $10,000 to construct using local labor. In total, 20 people went on the Jamaica mission trip, all from Sacramento, except two people from Alaska. All the people on the trips are Russian immigrants from Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus because most of them are from the youth group at Russian Vozesenie Church.
The Lord is Alive Mission is traveling with Food For The Poor (FFP), the third largest international charity in the United States.
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The Russian group mission leader, Dmitriy Vakulchik, heard that Food For The Poor was raising money to build homes for the poor in Jamaica on a Christian radio and encouraged the youth group at his church to participate. The group was able to raise $10,000 through car washes, an extended yard sale spanning a couple of weeks, funds from The Lord is Alive Mission, and donations.
In addition to painting the homes, the Russian group is spending its time in Jamaica visiting needy communities and slum areas on the island. Among the many neighborhoods the youth group will be visiting are: Ellerslie Community in Spanish Town – one of the worst slum areas on the island; Poor Relief – a shelter, feeding center, and refuge for many homeless people in Kingston; Golden Age Home – the home of 360 elderly and handicapped resident; and Portland Cottage – an area on the southernmost tip of the island where 15,000 residents live in abject poverty.
The highlight of the trip, according to Food For The Poor, will be the visit to St. Mark’s Fishing Village, located at Farquhar’s Beach on the southern coast of the island. The village is among the most destitute of the fishing community where there is no potable water, poor and inadequate housing, no sanitary facilities, no electricity, and poor roads.
Starting in January 2003, FFP supplied the fisherman in the village with boats, engines, safety gear, accessories and storage sheds. In addition, FFP trained the villagers in the essentials of deep water fishing and navigation and built over 80 housing units.
Food For the Poor – ranked as the number one relief agency operating in the Caribbean and Central America – will completely restore the Ellerslie Community, which is marked by rusty zinc fences and crumbling shacks.
In Portland Cottage, FFP has helped build over 2,100 housing unit, 33 classrooms, 26 training facilities, 28 rural grocery stories, 23 small trades & craft shops, 5 small restaurants and 40 chicken farms. A water supply system will be built soon and the Portland Cottage Civic Center is currently under development. The Center will serve as an educational and development center for the community and will include a DVD Room, Computer Lab, Library, Office & Storage Rooms, Sanitation facilities and a playground for the children.
FFP also helps fund Poor Relief and Golden Age Home.
