ANCHOVY, St James — Assistant manager of Garland Hall Memorial Children’s Home in Anchovy, St James, Dahlia Ingram has lauded Starbucks and MultiCare Youth Foundation (MYF) for establishing a sustainable vegetable garden at the institution.

“We are grateful for them (Starbucks and MultiCare) as they are really assisting us with vegetables, and the children will do the actual taking care of the farm after they have left, and we will have the vegetables to use in our kitchen,” Ingram expressed.

She added that the vegetable garden will help to reduce the institution’s food bill.

“Most meals the wards have here at Garland include vegetables, so it will help to cut down on the vegetable cost, because we will have this garden that can be used in a couple of months, and then we can replant and have it going again,” Ingram explained.

She was speaking with the Jamaica Observer West following a Starbucks YUTE Work Project at the children’s home recently.

Starbucks Foundation and MYF, through its Youth Upliftment Through Employment (YUTE) programme and training partners, HEART Trust/NTA, collaborated for the programme at the home, which saw the group establishing a vegetable garden as well as the presentation of lawn chairs and books for the wards.

This project formed part of Starbucks’ community outreach programme.

“Actually, before we opened our doors last November we had an initial community day at this orphanage (Garland Hall Memorial), where we did a bit of sprucing up of the inside and outside of their living areas. and because Garland Hall is our Doctor’s Cave store’s community initiative, we decided to make something even bigger come out of it with MultiCare Foundation,” said Nicola Groves, marketing coordinator for Starbucks in Jamaica.

Groves noted that, as a part of Starbucks’ mission and values, each store has its own community initiative that is based around the community that they are within and, as a result, “because this is our Montego Bay store, this is our Montego Bay community initiative”.

She stressed that Starbucks will always maintain the relationship with the Garland Hall Children’s Home.

MYF came into existence in March last year, through the amalgamation of three youth-serving organisations, MultiCare Foundation, Youth Upliftment Through Employment (YUTE) and Youth Opportunities Unlimited in an effort to provide life skills and enrichment programmes for young people between the ages of 16 and 29 years.

Executive director of MYF, Alicia Glasgow Gentles, noted that the establishment of the vegetable garden at Garland Hall, is the group’s first project in St James.

“This is the first time that YUTE is coming into Montego Bay. In fact, there was an Observer story in February of last year when they asked me, ‘when are we going to expand?’, but at the time we did not have any opportunities, and by the end of the year this opportunity presented itself. So we are happy to be in Montego Bay through Starbucks,” expressed Glasgow Gentles, who added, “especially because Starbucks recently came to Jamaica’.

She pointed out that Starbucks Foundation had provided a grant to the programme to provide skills training, life skills mentorship, and internship placement for 60 young people between the ages of 16 and 29 in Kingston and St James.

“Our participants came out to volunteer today (recently) as a way for them to give back because they have been given opportunities by Starbucks through the project,” Glasgow Gentles explained.

The volunteers planted a variety of vegetable seedlings and inscribed positive messages on the lawn chairs that they donated to the institution.

Some 22 children between the ages of seven and 17 years are based at the more than 100-year-old home, which is manned by six staff members.

The home, which is owned by the Jamaica Baptist Union, is currently run and funded through a joint public/private partnership between the women’s federation of the Jamaica Baptist Union and the Child Development Agency.