Robert Hart, Staff ReporterFIFTEEN FOREIGN students are in the island as part of a project to help foster better relationships between local and British youth.
The programme brings students from the United Kingdom to share experiences with Jamaican children.
At the Restoration Christian School, Trench Town, yesterday, local students welcomed the youth group from the Grace Community Church, England, on the second leg of an Air Jamaica-sponsored trip to the island. The youth group, which arrived in Montego Bay last week, spent the day with children at the school.
"The idea is to build relationships between the United Kingdom and Jamaica. We fly preachers back and forth to preach in churches in England and to preach in churches here," said Oliver Foot, Air Jamaica and Sandals Resorts vice-president in charge of public affairs, speaking on the national airline's six-year sponsorship programme. "Now for the first time, just this occasion, we brought a youth group from a church in England," he added.
The UK group was scheduled to spend the entire day with the inner-city school children, ending with an afternoon trip to the Blue Mountains.
The visitors, who will be heading back to England tomorrow after spending 10 days in the island, spent their time in Montego Bay working with children from the Christian Life Fellowship Church.
"The beauty of tourism is that it makes all of us realise we are all the same," said Air Jamaica and Sandals Resorts chairman Gordon "Butch" Stewart, to the audience gathered at the Restoration School.
Mr. Stewart explained that he felt it was necessary for children, especially of the economically disadvantaged sphere, to gain experiences external to their daily lives.
"It is the single best way to dig ourselves out of the hole of poverty that Jamaica is in," he said, adding, "It shows youngsters what is possible".
Mr. Stewart said the best thing that happened to him in his own life was spending time in school abroad. He said of his schooling in England, "It opens up your mind to see the way first world people live".
The Restoration School was opened in 1994 by founder and principal Lorna Stanley, who returned to Jamaica in 1994 to help in the education of disadvantaged inner-city youth.
