When the island of Jamaica is mentioned, most of us instantly think of the beautiful white sandy beaches, the tropical weather and the perfect honeymoon destination. However, the majority of us are unaware of the overwhelming poverty that the residents face. Inadequate food and housing and the lack of clean drinking water are prevalent.
In May of 2010 a few students from St. John Fisher College visited children in a Kingston, Jamaica suburb called Riverton Trucking & Disposal Cooperative Society in hopes of positively impacting their lives through reading, music, arts and crafts, and sports games. Little did they know that after the 10 day trip they would be leaving just as changed as the children they were there to help.
“Every day was a challenge,” senior Kelsey Defayette remembers about the trip. The challenges arose when the price of the service trip was announced. Not only would the Fisher students have to raise money for their own way down, between $750 and $800, but also raise enough money to create t-shirts for the 125 children campers for the week, and supply a hot lunch and snacks every day.
“The hardest thing we ever did was getting potential donors past the idea that JASY (Jamaican Advantage Thru Sports for Youth) was going to Kingston, Jamaica to help rather than going for pleasure,” Fisher Community Service Director Sally Vaughan states.
The idea for a service trip to Jamaica came across Vaughan’s lap four years ago from Fisher alum David McEneany. Vaughan remembers McEneany visiting her office with this wonderful idea to help the at risk youth in a very poor village near Kingston. St. John Fisher College administrators were not on board at first with this idea because the students would be helping in a very underprivileged community and the cost of liability was high.
“We were going to be on the other side of the barbed wire fence,” Vaughan declares.
After much convincing, Vaughan got the OK and was able to start pulling her team together through many of the community service organizations she runs on campus.
“I announced the project and formed an informational meeting; 12 juniors and senior students showed up and by the end of the meeting 10 were willing to sign up,” Vaughan states.
Group fund raising became an enormous obstacle to overcome. The group was given less than six months to raise enough money in time for the trip in May 2010. “Many of the students decided to forgo Christmas presents and instead ask for donations from family members around the holidays,” Vaughan remembers.
“It was all about sacrifice,” Vaughan says, and the group quickly learned upon arriving to Jamaica it would all be worth it.
The camp ran Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 or 5 p.m. The children were between the ages of 3-year-olds in diapers and 7-year-old youngsters. Fisher students had taken the time to plan out every detail of the day for the children at the camp but quickly learned that they were going to have to adapt; changing these kids was not going to happen in a week.
“The kids weren’t ever taught to share, or even knew what forming a line was,” Defayette remembers. The kids had survival skills, which is what they needed in order to live in the environment they were born into. They would come to the camp early in the morning by themselves and would leave at the end of the day the same way, alone.
One would think that these children were unhappy or felt abandoned, but this was all they knew. “The love the little kids had, they have nothing but they still love you so much,” Defayette remembers. “The kids could be playing with a rubber band ball, barefoot on broken glass and beer bottles, but they are still so happy.”
Senior Mike Thomas remembers his thoughts when stepping off the bus the first day at a town dump. “A little boy named Johnny came up and held my hand. I had never met him before, but this 5-year-old told me all I needed to know about this trip. These kids didn’t desire clothes; they didn’t desire food or any tangible gift. All they wanted was love. They certainly gave us love throughout the trip.” The children wanted to show off their huts and would take you by the hand lead you all around the dump, so proud of where they come from, Thomas added.
Every night the JASY group met for a couple hours to talk about the day’s activities and how everyone was progressing. Since the children were used to hitting or stealing in order to get what they wanted, it was difficult for the JASY team to work with them. Like Defayette, many of the students came to the meeting looking for help; keeping the children under control was a vital task for the group.
One of the members from JASY came up with idea to have the kids form a “choo choo train” with them holding onto each others shoulders “chugging” from station to station.
“It worked!” Defayette remembers. The Fisher students found that if they were able to incorporate fun and activities that got the children involved they were so much better off than trying to get the children to participate in mundane tasks.
By the end of the trip both the campers and the JASY team were truly inspired and changed. A highlight for Defayette happened on the last day when she was passing out sticker books to the children.
“The little girls got princess and castle stickers and the boys got snakes and frogs. One of the little boys wanted a castle for his frog so the little girl handed him one. They were sharing!”As the days dwindled and the camp was coming to an end, real friendships had arisen from these children and JASY crew members. Defayette remembers one little boy who was only 2 years old who came to her every morning, just to fall asleep in her arms.
“He felt safe,” Defayette declares. This was something most of these children were not used to.
As the bus pulled away from the camp for the last time everyone was in tears. The children were chasing the bus, because they knew the group was leaving and would not be back Monday for another camp session.
The impact the JASY crew made and received from these children were truly life changing, the group members came away believing. A new group of Fisher students, along with ones from Nazareth College, plan on making another visit to Kingston, Jamaica in May 2012.
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