A fire that might have been viewed only as a disaster could today be described as a blessing in disguise as it averted the closure of the century-old Wortley Home for Girls on Constant Spring Road in St Andrew.

Prior to the fire in 2015, the home’s board of management was struggling to keep its doors open.

“… Not being able to pay our utilities… not being able to support [in terms of] food in a way that we wanted… not being able to support salaries that we needed,” member of the board of management Tanya Wildish told the Jamaica Observer following a dedication ceremony and the reopening of the girls’ home yesterday.

Wildish explained that even with the new structure, there are still challenges.

“We are at a very small staff complement and there is no way that I can bring 32 girls in with the staff complement I have right now. I have to increase the staff complement before I can get to full capacity, but I have to figure out a way to pay them. They are not coming here for free. So all of these issues were real issues,” Wildish said, adding that the institution was in a crisis.

The institution is one of three children’s homes which were established by the Diocese of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands and currently operates under the Child Protection and Family Services Agency (CPFSA).

“In every board meeting it was like, ‘What do you do with this?’ We are not serving the children at this point and then CDA (Child Development Agency now CPFSA) was having all these children that they needed for us to take and we couldn’t take them because we just couldn’t afford to take them. So we were at a real crisis point,” Wildish, who has been a board member for 13 years, said.

Wildish further said that members of the board were even thinking about repurposing the building.

“It was a very difficult time when the decision was being made, whether or not we needed to close. So when the fire happened, really, we were consumed… we didn’t actually know if we were going to keep the children or not, or if CDA would take the children back, but they didn’t. They left them in our care. So now we had a property that was unusable, but we were still paying on it and then having to maintain children at SOS (Jamaica) so the finances at that point literally became crazy,” Wildish said.

Wildish, who is adamant that they cannot continue on the same path, said they will have to find a method to sustain the home.

“I was introduced to social enterprise some years ago and the concept of social enterprise… is non-profit self-sufficiency. In other words, you are just not surviving on donations but you are doing something that brings in some kind of income that helps. The reality is, can an orphanage ever be completely self-sufficient? I don’t really know. So there will always be some level of donations involved, but we can do something,” she said.

Wildish, who was unable to say how much money they received from the Government to take care of the girls, said they received a quarter of what they would spend to maintain them.

In the meantime, Food For the Poor Chairman Andrew Mahfood said at yesterday’s ceremony that his organisation was pleased to be part of the rebuilding process for the girls’ home.

“It is amazing what we can do as a people when tragedy strikes and we decide to come together to do good. Nothing can break down people when they set their mind on a cause,” Mahfood said, adding that when he met with the stakeholders at the ground-breaking ceremony in 2016, the scope of the project was daunting.

Reverend Dr Howard Gregory said the reconstruction of the home was done with “abundant grace”.

Gregory, while noting that the rebuilding is motivating to those who have contributed to the home over the years, congratulated the members of the board for their leadership in ensuring that the project was completed.

The home now has the capacity to house 32 girls, up from the previous capacity of 24.

The facilities at the home include a sick bay, a homework and study room equipped with computers that were donated by former wards of the state who now reside overseas, an office and meeting room, a common area for visitors, emergency staircases, a modern security system, and landscaped grounds.