KINGSTON, Jamaica: Swapping out of their usual office attire, dozens of Digicel employees, equipped with shovels, paintbrushes and work boots, spent hours on Saturday, March 25 cleaning up, beautifying, and sprucing up the Santa Cruz Special Education Centre in St Elizabeth.

Construction Project Manager at Digicel Foundation, Carnel Campbell explained that the voluntary work focused primarily on improving the agricultural space at the school.

“As part of the scope of work for this project, we created an agricultural area to support the technical and vocational training programme at the school. The volunteers planted bananas, onions, sweet peppers and other crops. The school grounds received a much-needed facelift thanks to the flowers and greenery planted by our volunteers along the newly constructed driveway. We also did additional landscaping, added a boundary fence and painted the main building and the walkways,” Campbell said.

He also praised the volunteers who turned out to participate.

“Our volunteers make all our projects possible and generously give of their time to causes that matter to them. Thanks to them, this Centre is now ready to better serve the special needs students and communities in the St Elizabeth and Manchester regions.”

Several community groups also joined the effort to help transform the school including the Manchester and St Elizabeth divisions at the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA).

The Ballards Valley Community Development Committee (CDC), who were 2019 Digicel Foundation ‘15 Strong’ grant recipients, donated bananas, sweet peppers, lettuce and scotch bonnet suckers.

“The contribution from the Ballards Valley Community Development Committee came from members who were beneficiaries of the drip irrigation and office furniture grant that we got two years ago from Digicel Foundation. When I told the members about the project that was being done for the special needs school, they were more than willing to contribute,” said Hamlet Stone, president of the Ballards Valley CDC.

Stone further expressed, “The group is very appreciative of the Digicel Foundation grant and is willing to contribute in any way possible because if it wasn’t for the grant, we wouldn’t be able to contribute to the community in general and the Santa Cruz project.”

Meanwhile, the Lower Prosper Development Group in St Elizabeth donated tomato and sweet pepper seedlings. The group’s president, Slater Garwood said, “As soon as Digicel Foundation told us about the work day, we jumped on board because it was for a worthy cause.”

The Santa Cruz Special Education Centre is Digicel Foundation’s10th Special Needs School renovated in partnership with the Special Education Unit at the Ministry of Education and Youth.

The Special Education Centre will serve as a transitional programme for students six to 16 years old with mild to severe intellectual and developmental disabilities.