AS Venisa Clarke-Lee dashed from aisle to aisle at the Hi-Lo Supermarket in Portmore last Tuesday, she had only one aim in mind — to grab enough groceries to feed as many of the 700 homeless on the streets of Kingston and St Catherine for Christmas as possible.

Clarke-Lee, who works at the National Council on Drug Abuse on the ‘Tek it to Dem’ Project, said that each year the group tries to have a treat for the homeless but this year was proving somewhat difficult, financially.

“We normally try to have a Christmas treat every year, and for this year it was a little bit difficult to come up with the food and everything that we needed, so we saw it in the Observer and we said we wanted to try it for our clients to see if we would win,” she explained. “We knew it would require an individual thing but we say let’s take the chance, and the coordinator, Mrs Jhanille Brooks, submitted the information and we got the call on Friday. We were so excited!”

The opportunity was made possible courtesy of the Jamaica Observer in a bid to give back to the community, along with GasPro which donated a 25-pound cylinder and a free refill.

As a result, the 28-year-old focused mainly on grabbing items from the aisles which stocked rice, sugar, flour, ketchup, canned products, meat and cereal.

At the end of the 90-second grocery dash Clarke-Lee was armed with groceries totalling $43,489.37.

“All I want from it is oats and a Supligen to put back my energy, because when we leave here I am going to cook to feed the clients this evening,” she declared as she tried to catch her breath following the dash.

Brooks, the project coordinator at the National Council on Drug Abuse, explained that the feeding programme was in its sixth year, even though the main aim at the organisation was HIV and substance abuse prevention. However, members of the organisation had become passionate about feeding the homeless, whether or not they fall under the two categories.

“We try to do more for the homeless clients so we always try to feed them more than we are mandated to”, Brooks explained. “I mean its Christmastime so we wanted to do something nice, even though that’s not our deliverable scope of work. We also have a health fair for them every year. We have a programme where we take them to the doctor and refer them to services. So really and truly, feeding them is not what we are mandated to do. Even though there are 600 of them in Kingston and about 100 in St Catherine we are going to be doing the feeding today,” she said.

Brooks said that there were five people on her team but one was on vacation, leaving the group of four to prepare and hand out food to as many homeless as they could for the Christmas treat.

Clarke-Lee said she had joined the Tek it to Dem programme in May 2013 and it is something that she loves and is passionate about.

“I specialise in mental health and substance abuse, so this is a good field for me to be in,” she said. “I wanted to see what it would be like working in a different environment so I came on the programme and I’ve been working there ever since.”

Clarke-Lee, who originated from Montego Bay, attended the Mount Alvernia High School where she did track and field and played netball for her school.

She received a scholarship to the University of Technology (UTech) and specialised in the art and science of coaching. After leaving UTech she received another scholarship to St John’s University in New York where she did her Bachelor’s degree in Human Services, which she explained was similar to social work. She then did her Master’s degree n Sociology after which she worked in New York for a short time before returning to Jamaica.

“I came back home to work here with this (HIV) population,” Clarke-Lee said. “What I do know is that nobody is safe from being homeless, mentally ill or being infected with HIV. Just a simple thing as a fire can cause you to be homeless, and then that same stress can lead to mental illness. We’re living in a society today where HIV is no respecter of persons, so you can be there chilling and being committed while your partner is out there and running road as they say, and you become infected. So we have to be aware of these things when we provide services to people and that is why I love what I do ’cause it reminds me every day about the things that I need to be grateful for.”

And so it was with great joy and gratitude that Clarke-Lee, who was once a high jumper for Jamaica, along with her three co-workers who accompanied her to the store, left the supermarket in Portmore, loaded with groceries and excited about the prospect of now having food to prepare and distribute to the homeless.

She also received a voucher for a 25-pound gas cylinder and a free refill from GasPro.

“Ideally, I would love for us to get some more funding so we would be able to not only be a mobile outreach but we can have a drop-in centre or a facility that allows people to come off the streets — somewhere where they can get cleaned and be able to look presentable, be able to get some job preparation assistance, help with résumés, daily counselling skills, etc.

“When you are mobile it limits the amount of things that we are able to do so if we can get funding to start something like a facility that would be marvellous,” Clarke-Lee said.