Astil Gage, leader of the Beeston Spring Mento Band was among nine recipients who were awarded at the Sav-la-Mar Courthouse Square last Monday for continuous outstanding service in various areas of community development.

A stalwart of Westmoreland’s hilly Beeston Spring, Gage wears several hats.

He has been president of the Beeston Spring Community Development Committee since it began in the year 2000. The Community Development Committee won the Digicel Best Community parish competitions in 2007 and 2008. One of the outstanding achievements was the awarding of a $2.1-million grant to rebuild the community’s namesake spring to provide a better water source for the residents and $1.3 million for landscaping at the spring to promote community tourism.

Between the years 1994 -1999, he was a member of the Westmoreland Youth Leaders and placed first one year as Youth Leader of the Year. A strong member of his Moravian church, he has been involved in the Men’s Association and acted as captain of the Salem Moravian Boys Brigade for more than 10 years and currently serves as a lay preacher for the church.

As founder and director of Southside Development Company, he provides electrical services to persons in the neighbouring Whitehouse area. His community activism extends to the Whitehouse area where he was community services director of the Whitehouse Kiwanis Club and he is at present a director of the Kiwanis Westmoreland South.

When he is not actively engaged with his various community work, he is busy with the mento band. This band is known all over the area as the “Nine-Nine band”. They willingly travel to homes to cheer the bereaved with their music. This band also has an interesting concept in that it is designed to include young persons participating and learning the tradition. The band therefore comprises a mix of generations from an octogenarian to a teenager. As a result of its unique approach to preserving the tradition, the Beeston Spring band has been featured on television as we well as in international magazines.

Mr Gage says he believes that Jamaica’s success lies in the ability of communities to be mobilised to action and the adults becoming role models to the youngsters. He points to the initiative of Community Tourism programme which the Beeston Spring community is involved with in association with Country Style Tourism Network, headed by Mrs Diana Pike. He feels that if each community would get together and create a roadmap for itself, rather than sit down and wait at the mercy of government handouts, Jamaica would become a better place.