MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica. As Jamaica’s children went back to school this week, the S Hotel Foundation launched a J$1.5 million grant programme for the sons and daughters of tourism workers whose hotels have still not reopened since Hurricane Melissa.
Primary and secondary students will receive between J$25,000 and J$50,000 each, with the larger sums going mainly to high school pupils, whose costs run higher.
Foundation founder Christopher Issa said the scheme was prompted by the situation facing families who have gone months without a regular wage while waiting for their workplaces to reopen. He said the amounts were set deliberately so that the help would be more than a gesture.
Jamaica’s tourism sector has recovered substantially since the storm, but repairs and rebuilding continue at some properties, and the staff attached to them remain out of work. For those households, the new term has landed a fresh round of expenses, uniforms, shoes, books, transport and meals, on budgets already stretched thin.
The foundation is not waiting for families to come forward. Human resources managers at hotels, pastors, teachers and community leaders can nominate households for the grants, on the reasoning that the people most in need are often the least likely to ask.
The programme sits within the foundation’s wider support for education and for communities across western Jamaica hit hardest by the hurricane. Mr Issa said the workers still waiting to return should not be forgotten in the talk of arrivals and earnings, because they are the people who make the industry run.
Families can be put forward by email to comms@shotelsjamaica.com.
LRTVS News Desk
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