MANDEVILLE, Manchester — With lives and livelihoods turned upside down by the coronavirus pandemic, a small group of young people are fighting the odds and doing their little bit to help others.

Starting from her “little corner” in Royal Flat, Manchester, founder and projects manager of a non-profit organisation called 4Ts (Transforming Trash To Treasure), Crystal Scale, and her friends began a drive last year to “give back” to the community.

4Ts was originally founded in 2017 and focused on upcycling waste to useful products. It has since evolved to members’ giving back to the community in other ways.

According to the 24-year-old Scale, the projects mainly involve helping to meet the basic material needs of the homeless and families in financially desperate situations.

Sleeping mats made from plastic bags for the homeless has been among the 4Ts first initiatives.

Scale said public education about homelessness was also an ongoing project.

“We want to advocate and promote awareness… the reality that not all homeless persons are necessarily insane. But homelessness is just the nature of not having a place of abode to go home to and a lot of the time, it results in persons living on our streets,” she said.

An awardee of Governor General Sir Patrick Allen’s ‘I believe Initiative’, Scale is committed to Sir Patrick’s stated philosophy “that there is nothing wrong about Jamaica that cannot be fixed with what is right about Jamaica”.

A recent project conducted by 4Ts was to assist a family in Manchester which had suffered the loss of a breadwinner, leaving a grandmother to fend for her three grandchildren.

Internet marketer and cattle farmer Layten Pryce, a donor on the 4Ts team, was instrumental in organising a gift to the family of supplies, including 25 chickens, five bags of chicken feed, chicken warmers, boosters and feeders in March.

“I was on-site … and the lady was drawn to tears to show her appreciation…,” recalled Pryce.

She told the Jamaica Observer that it is the feeling of being able to help someone that makes her want to do more.

Gratitude was also forthcoming from principal of the We Care Basic School, Alicia Thompson. Her school was assisted by Pryce in preparation for face-to-face classes when the Government rolled out a short-lived pilot programme for the opening of schools.

“I appreciate it a great deal because right now, we have our thermometers to use when we get back to school. She (Pryce) purchased dispensers for us, she even purchased a mattress for us,” said Thompson.

The basic school principal said she’s grateful that promises were made and kept.

Items donated included paint, temperature readers, sanitiser dispensers, a bed for the school’s sickbay and more than 100 books for teachers and students.

For the assistant manager of KDL Agricultural Supplies on Hotel Street, Mandeville, Kahlil Lawson, who has been on the 4Ts team for the past 18 months assisting with donations, it is always a good thing to give back.

“I feel like everyone has a certain duty to try and help someone less fortunate than them,” he said.

Lawson has plans to make KDL a drop off location for those who would like to donate to the needy, be it members of the 4Ts team or others. Scale is hoping to have more donors come on board to help with a drive to provide for the homeless on World Homeless Day, October 10, 2021.