Diaspora group makes $250,000 donation to Falmouth Infant School

New York-based non-profit organisation, the Friends of Falmouth last week made a donation of $250,000 to the Falmouth Infant School in Trelawny.

A cheque in the amount was presented to acting principal, Patrice Beharie, by local members of the group, Florence Logan, a former president of the Trelawny Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and Patrice Simpson, a Falmouth-based author, on Tuesday, June 28 at a handover ceremony at the school.

Logan said the donation will be in the form of vouchers to purchase books and other school and other stationery, and to assist the 81 students who will be leaving the institution to attend various primary schools.

Seventy-nine students will each receive a gift voucher for $3,000, and while the top-two students identified by the teachers will each receive $5,000 vouchers. Logan said that the two valedictorians will be given additional funding from the donation. These are redeemable at the Trelawny Pharmacy & Book Supplies in Water Square.

Logan said Friends of Falmouth recognises the important role that Falmouth Infant School has played in the members’ formative years, and that of several generations of children from the area.

“It has helped to shape their lives to achieve higher education and we are now playing our various roles in different areas of society,” Logan said, “We feel that it is important to give back to where we came from so that students who are attending now and those to come will have an opportunity to excel.”

Acting Pprincipal Beharie welcomed the new partnership and looked forward to how it will help shape the institution for the future.

“We are appreciative of this new partnership that we are forging with Friends of Falmouth. I just want to say thank you. We are looking forward to working with the organisation,” Beharie said.

She added, “It is always good to know that we have someone onboard to lend support to the school. It is one of those infant schools that serves the entire community of Falmouth and its surroundings.”

President of Friends of Falmouth, Michael A Wattkis, stressed the group’s commitment, saying that the organisation has in essence adopted the institution and will be spearheading several projects to help to improve the conditions at the school which first opened in 1962.

One such effort is a mega fund-raising raffle, to be drawn August 6, with the first prize of a one-week stay at Jewel Grande all-inclusive luxury resort in Montego Bay.

“Many of us in the Trelawny diaspora have passed through this basic school we affectionately call ‘Pond School It has helped to mould us into who we are today, so this is our way of giving back,” said Wattkis.