JAMAICANS WHO live in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, have been urged to support the Build Jamaica Foundation, (BJF) in its efforts to help provide better health care and education services for the children of Jamaica.
Dr. Basil Bryan, Consul General of Jamaica in New York, said that Jamaicans who live overseas, could help to overcome the problems in their homeland, if they seriously put their minds to it. He reminded the audience at the launching of the Tri-State chapter of the BJF at the Jamaican consulate in New York earlier this month that as far back as the 1930s when times were much harder, a group of patriotic Jamaicans decided to do what they could to help the land of their birth.
It was this decision and the determination to succeed which followed, that led to the formation of political parties, the attainment of self-government, and eventually culminated in independence for Jamaica, he said.
He then issued a challenge to Jamaicans in the Tri-State area, to take the baton of assistance to their homeland and carry it further. "It is just a different time, but the task is the same", he said, and urged his audience to help to make a difference by supporting the Foundation.
The Rev. Al Miller, chairman of the Build Jamaica Foundation in Jamaica, expressed his appreciation to the members of the new USA chapter and thanked the chairman of the board Leroy Brown, and its members, for agreeing to serve.
He told those present that the responsibility of each generation is to chart the way and leave an inheritance for the next. Jamaica continued to go through tough times he said, but he was confident that with the necessary commitment by every Jamaican, at home and overseas, the tide would turn.
Rev. Miller assured those present, that in spite of the negative reports on Jamaica, many good things were happening, and if more people worked hard enough together, in a positive way, those negatives could be nullified.
He gave a brief history of the formation of the BJF, and said that the Foundation was designed to assist in nation building and helping to produce a new Jamaica for the 21st century. Rev. Miller pointed to the fact that between 60 and 70 cents of every dollar in Jamaica's current budget, went to debt servicing, and this he said, had a severe impact on what was available for economic growth.
Education and health care, he said are critical to the future, as a source of liberation for the people, and he told his audience that, "we cannot in the short run make an impact, if we depend solely on the revenue which the government of Jamaica now takes in."
The Foundation's long term objectives in Education and Health, he said, would be far reaching, but in the short term the focus of attention was to supply the Intensive Care Unit of the Bustamante Children's Hospital in Jamaica, with six ventilators. These units he said will save lives, and prevent doctors from having to make life and death decisions when more than one child needed the use of a ventilator.
If every Jamaican overseas contributed a dollar a day for one year in the first instance and then committed for another two years, the financial impact would be amazing, he said. He challenged all Jamaicans to support the Foundation, because "there is an urgent and immediate need, which cannot wait for tomorrow. A sense of hopelessness has gripped our nation, and if we do not do something quickly, then things will deteriorate further, and induce more fear and uncertainty.
