In keeping with their commitment to champion the cause of alleviating hunger in Jamaica, Restaurants of Jamaica (ROJ), under their KFC Add Hope feeding initiative, handed over a $7.4-million donation recently to the Ministry of Education, Youth and Information (MoEYI) through the Ministry’s partners Nutrition Products Limited (NPL) to aid in providing well-needed nutritious meals for basic and primary school children in need across Jamaica.

The presentation took place at the ceremonious signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between ROJ, MoEYI and NPL held at Mona Heights Primary School in Kingston.

This followed ROJ’s initial donation of $4 million through Add Hope in 2018 when the partnership between the MoEYI (through their School Feeding Unit) and NPL was first formalised. This initial contribution towards the National Feeding Programme resulted in over 82,000 meals being distributed to 3,500 students at the basic and primary level within close proximity to 35 KFC restaurants islandwide. It was estimated that this year’s donation of $7.4 million will benefit 82 schools over a longer period of time than the previous year.

Karl Samuda, minister without portfolio within the Ministry of Education, Youth and Information, gave remarks at the event and shared that, “We’re always grateful for partnerships such as these which benefit and touch the lives of a great many across our island.”

He continued, “This is a team effort and Restaurants of Jamaica has shown tremendous potential to help subsidise our efforts. We feel your support and the children who stand to benefit from this do as well.”

Minister Samuda went on to emphasise that the provision of meals for children in need is paramount in ensuring their success in school.

Marketing director for Restaurants of Jamaica, Tina Matalon, highlighted that the donation of this sum was a united effort. “With the support of the Inter-secondary School Sports Association (ISSA) and the football teams, like Clarendon College, who made this year’s schoolboy football season more than just about medals and trophies, we were able to raise $1.1 million through our KFC ‘Goals for Meals’ campaign, through which we donated $600 for every goal scored during the first round of last season’s Manning and daCosta Cup competitions, of which KFC was a major sponsor.

“We would also like to say a heartfelt thank you to our loyal customers for their in-store donations during World Food Month in October last year, which meant that we were able to generate an additional $1.8 million to ensure that even more children would receive nutritious meals during this academic year.”

Speaking on the efforts of his team in supporting the KFC Add Hope initiative, Richard Palmer, Clarendon College football team manager, relayed that, “The boys play with heart and love for the sport and it’s fulfilling to know that by doing something that they love has, in turn, benefited less fortunate children who, without the KFC ‘Goals for Meals’ initiative, probably wouldn’t have been able to afford meals at school.”

Clarendon College contributed a significant number of goals in the first round of the 2019 ISSA schoolboy football season (more than 30) and for each goal, ROJ donated $600 towards the National School Feeding Programme.

“Football has always been described as ‘the beautiful game’ and nothing is more beautiful than helping to shape the lives of our young children. Clarendon College football team is proud to have contributed to this initiative through the number of goals we scored and come next season, you can count on our contribution yet again, as we will definitely be scoring many goals,” Palmer added.

After the respective parties signed the dotted line committing their endeavours to this year’s initiative, gospel artiste and KFC Add Hope Ambassador Kevin Downswell gave the evening a fitting close. He performed some of his crowd favourites which left everyone in high spirits.

ROJ’s Add Hope efforts are aimed at providing meals to basic and primary level students where meals are most needed to ensure that students can focus on their early development. This injection into feeding our nation’s students will allow the ministry to reallocate towards feeding basic and primary level to provide more meals at the secondary and basic level.