Gareth Manning, Gleaner Writer
Catalyst volunteers interacting with students at the Grace and Staff Community Development Homework Centre. - PHOTOS BY WINSTON SILL/FREELANCE PHOTOGRAPHER
AT LEAST eight Jamaican students have earned scholarships since 1997 to study at universities in the United States through the Christian-based Catalyst Programme.
The United Church of Christ group, based in Columbus, Ohio, has been working through the Grace and Staff Community Development homework programme, to help students from mostly inner-city communities to earn a tertiary education.
All eight have earned at least a postgraduate degree, head of the group, Heather Biggers, told The Gleaner, and this summer they are working to help 24 other students get into colleges in the U.S.
Some of those eight students are working on doctoral degrees in areas such as physics, while others are doing postgraduate degrees in dentistry, accounting and another law.
For Heather, the whole experience with these youths started one summer while vacationing on the north coast.
"As I began to talk to people I began to learn more about Jamaica and tried to educate myself about the country, because it is a developing country and I am a woman of faith, so I didn't feel right to come and lay down on the beach in Jamaica and that's it," she said.
RESPONSE IMPRESSIVE
So she took a month from her job in Columbus, Ohio, and volunteered with the Kingston Restoration Company (KRC) in the inner-city community of Southside in Kingston.
She was impressed with the response she got from students and so she has been coming almost every summer since 1996. Heather took 10 of the brightest students with her to Columbus where they met with the press and local government. That experience started the Catalyst programme.
"So we said then 'What are the next steps?' I sent some people from my church to come visit and I said this is what I want you to do: Ask the community how can we work with you? And the community said help us educate our children, so that's why we do what we do."
SCHOOL FEES
The programme helps students in several ways. They help the needy with school fees and train mentors. They also donated
several books to the Homework Centre's library on Tower Street. But most of all what the programme seeks to do each year is prepare students for tertiary education and help them find scholarships.
"We provide them with funds to take the SATs, things like that. We'll give them funds to fill out application forms. When they are ready to go to college we will provide air fare and appropriate clothing if they are going someplace cold," she said.
Teneisha Thompson is one the eight students who benefited from Catalyst's intervention. She is from a poor community in Vere, Clarendon. While at sixth form at Glenmuir High School, like many Jamaicans, she was faced with the issue of funding her tertiary education.
"I was trying to figure out how to get a scholarship to go to UWI or UTech, but I knew I couldn't afford college and a loan might be impossible with my family situation it seemed completely hopeless," she told The Gleaner.
She called GraceKennedy Company and learnt about Catalyst. She was advised to take the SATs by them and she passed, earning a place in Benedict College in South Carolina. She was accepted into the college on a full scholarship. Teneisha now has a postgraduate degree in accounting working for a prestigious accounting firm in the United States.
Ramon Williams, a fifth former at St. Georges College, is now a student in the programme. He is from Parade Gardens in Kingston where the homework programme operates. He is a straight 'A' student who wants to be a computer engineer. The help from Catalyst is making that dream seem possible.
"It is a very exciting experience," he said.
