MANDEVILLE, Manchester — Less than 24 hours after the Jamaica Observer published Marcia Denton’s struggle of not being able to purchase a tablet for her 16-year-old son Roshawn Smith, the Miriam Tomlin Foundation gave him a tablet at his home in George’s Valley on the outskirts of Mandeville.

Smith, a fourth-form student of Holmwood Technical High School in Christiana, will be continuing his classes online.

“I am happy and grateful for it [tablet]…He never got to do any course at school [due to COVID-19] so I feel grateful that he can get to do his courses [online] at school now,” Denton told the Observer by telephone last Friday.

After the founder of Miriam Tomlin Foundation, Marcia Mitchell, read of Denton’s distress in last Thursday’s Observer, she had to help.

“When I came across the story, because I have the Observer on Facebook, something in me was just torn by the mother’s eyes. I just kept looking at her and it’s like I heard my mother say, ‘Do something,’ and I said, ‘This is…the purpose for which the foundation was set up…,’ and it is very new; it started in July of this year,” she said by telephone last Friday.

“I said, ‘I’m going to reach out to the Observer to help her [Denton],’ — not for any particular accolade, but to know that if the barrier is a tablet, you can make a difference by easing the situation for the child to go to school [online]. That is the main mission of what I’m trying to do,” she shared.

Mitchell, who is overseas, contacted the Observer and a connection was made between herself and Denton.

Mitchell’s cousin, Dreion Tomlin, then contacted Denton and not only delivered, but allowed Roshawn to pick a tablet of his choice.

Mitchell has committed to providing further assistance to Smith with his academics through the Miriam Tomlin Foundation — named in honour of her mother Miriam Tomlin, a philanthropist originally from George’s Valley, who was based overseas before she died last year.

“I told him [Roshawn] as long as he maintains his grades, whatever he needs to graduate and even if it is to college, we will make that happen for him. That is our promise,” she said.

“…We are going to make sure he has Internet access to do his schoolwork, because if we can eliminate some of the barriers he is facing then all he has to do is to concentrate and to maintain his proficiency in his educational goal,” she went on.

Roshawn, who has big dreams of becoming a pilot, said he is grateful for the assistance.

“I am grateful, because this will help me by giving me more information,” he said.

Mitchell hopes to continue her mother’s legacy of helping families and intends to assist other students like Roshawn.

“I came to Jamaica to establish my mother’s foundation for families like the Dentons. My mother provided money to families throughout Jamaica for 38 years for individuals to go to school. She passed away in 2019, and on her deathbed I promised her that I would continue her work,” she said.

“The main mission of what I am going to be doing is to provide, in the future, financial support to individuals like the Dentons, to alleviate some of the stressors that they face; but also in the future [I will] provide the necessary funding for them to go to school,” she said.