Welcome to the Friends of Jamaica Website!

Friends of Jamaica has a lot of exciting opportunities to assist Peace Corps Volunteers, their communities and projects. Returned volunteers and others interested in assisting Jamaica can read our latest newsletter to see how they can help. Please don't forget to donate to or join Friends of Jamaica.

Congratulations and thanks to everyone involved! Our book delivery was very successful. Over 7,000 books were delivered to schools all over Jamaica. the books were donated by First Book and shipped by Food for the Poor. We sent books to Peace Corps Volunters that they distributed and the USAID project: Expanding Education Horizons (EEH) distributed the books throughout the island. A few of the schools who received books: Inverness Primary in St. Ann, Allman Town Primary in Kingston, Children’s First in St. Catherine. PeaceCorpConnect recently recognized us on their new blog:
Sheryl Brown of EEH said,

“…we delivered some of the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' books to Inverness Primary School. They were ecstatic! All normal school activities came to a halt. Children were overtaken with glee and the joy that comes with new toys. The books were distributed immediately and the entire school (except the youngest babies) became a reading class. Numerous pictures were taken…”

We have received an outpouring of thank you letters from the children. Without your support, this project could not have worked so thanks again. We want to make book donations a regular project of FOJ so please let us know of any worthy groups in Jamaica

Many other grants were worthy of funding, but beyond our current scope:

• Mocho Primary wants to expand their gardening and composting project.
  
  
• Pollground Primary wants to replace their LCD projector
  
  
• Windsor Castle wants to transform their kitchen into a skills lab to expand feeding programs for schoolers and train parents & community members in cooking, nutrition, and business skills.
  
  
• Jacks Hill Primary wants assistance in building a computer lab for schoolers and parents to learn ICT skill.
  
  
• Chester Castle applied to put up partitions.

Our Treasury is currently at $2,500 so we are setting a short-term goal to triple our fundraising to $7,500. Thank you for all you do to help volunteers and Jamaicans. If you are interested in helping to fundraise for a particular project, contact us at via the email address president at servejamaica.org and we will help coordinate a giving campaign. Please renew your membership or make a donation to assist in these projects.

View the latest FOJ Newsletter from Fall 2009. Or read previous newlstters from FOJ Newsletter from Winter 2009, FOJ Newsletter from Spring 2008, or FOJ Newsletter from Summer 2008 (200K) .