Thu | Mar 28, 2024

Serving shut-ins and seniors with love and compassion

Co-founder of golden age home in Trench Town expresses thanks to donors

Published:Saturday | March 4, 2023 | 1:03 AMAinsworth Morris/Staff Reporter
From left: Claudette Clarke, Inez Watson and Christine Campbell pack small care packages for residents of the Eira Schader Home for the aged. The packages were donated by the Love Thy Neighbour Organisation.
From left: Claudette Clarke, Inez Watson and Christine Campbell pack small care packages for residents of the Eira Schader Home for the aged. The packages were donated by the Love Thy Neighbour Organisation.
Founder of the Love Thy Neighbour organization Lesline Banks presented a cheque to Lloyd Ferguson, co-founder of Eira Schader Home for the aged. Her foundation donated care packages and a cheque for $100,000 to the home on Thursday.
Founder of the Love Thy Neighbour organization Lesline Banks presented a cheque to Lloyd Ferguson, co-founder of Eira Schader Home for the aged. Her foundation donated care packages and a cheque for $100,000 to the home on Thursday.
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Lloyd Ferguson, the 65-year-old co-founder of the secluded inner-city golden age home called Eira Schader in Trench Town, who is now on the brink of his retirement, has one regret in life that still lingers in his mind.

He recounts that as a teenager 47 years ago, he, like many other inner-city youths back then, allowed politicians and a gang to influence him to take up guns and promote violence.

However, on May 3, 1976 he received “scatter shots” in both of his eyes, which was a turning point in his life, and a day that only changed his life for the better.

“In 1976 to [19]80, we find seh the politician dem a supply in here with all kind of evil things ... We get caught up between these PNP and JLP cause mi was a violence man inna my young youth days, enuh,” the now visually impaired man told The Gleaner on Thursday as he explained how his career as a care-giver began.

“Mi get gunshot inna my two eye [dem], and that was very good for me. It changed me right around. I got scatter shot, but a di best thing weh ever happen to me in life, because it keep me out of violence; it keep me out of trouble. A it mek we start this home and take care of these elderly persons,” he said.

After recovering from gunshot injuries, Ferguson said residents of Upper First Street, in Trench Town where he resided, were fleeing the community and leaving the elderly behind.

This stirred an interest in him and his friends, Jamaica’s greatest Reggae legend to date, Bob Marley and Tappa Zukie, to make the Golden Age Home a reality.

However, he never started reaping the fruits of their labour until 1985, four years after Bob Marley’s death. “Me, Zukie and Bob Marley sat down on the same road one day, and we were planning it out and Bob promised to do it when he returned from touring, but he never returned,” Ferguson explained to The Gleaner.

Work for the Eira Schader Golden Age Home started in 1985 with the renovation of an old building at 38 Upper First Street in Trench Town, Kingston and the Home was officially opened on October 9, 1986.

He also made note that acquiring the property at 38 Upper First Street in Trench Town was not an easy one, but a process where they were assisted by the Government of Jamaica and poplefrom Europe and Switzerland, more specifically Eira and Angella Schader, who came to Jamaica and decided they wanted to help Trench Town.

Ferguson has been managing the Home since 1991, a task he said has been burdensome, but one he has been carrying wholeheartedly with love and compassion and also based on monthly donations of $40,000 he receives from the Bob Marley Foundation since 2001 and $100,000 from the Jamaica United Relief Agency since 2016.

He told The Gleaner that he is thankful that the current violence producers in Trench Town have spared the Eira Schader Golden Age Home for disturbances and have kept away from Upper First Street.

“The youth dem inside here know seh it’s a Golden Age home up here so, so dem don’t try fi bring no violence or nothing roun this side here. Dem always keep it out of the Golden Age Home cause dem more try fi protect it than fi hurt it because they see what we are doing here,” Ferguson told The Gleaner.

Ferguson is happy donors continue to support the Eira Schader Golden Age Home including the Connecticut-based charity, Love Thy Neighbour Project, which visited on Thursday and gave $100,000 and food and other household items valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The donations were well received by Ferguson, who expressed gratitude on behalf of the eight elderly residents and shut-ins now being housed there.

Ferguson’s dream is to establish a registered foundation for the Eira Schader Golden Age Home so that more people who are willing to donate will trust the institution enough to send their cash and kind.

The Eira Schader Golden Age Home was also the recipient of all donations made at the Victoria Mutual Building Society (VMBS) National Leadership Prayer Breakfast in 2016.

ainsworth.morris@gleanerjm.com