MONTEGO BAY, St James – A $30-million donation from the MBJ Foundation is expected to make a difference in the lives of infants who will study at Flanker Primary and Infant School.

The funds will go towards building a new classroom block for the infant school. Work is expected to start in the new year.

“What you have done today is to help in changing a community, you’re helping to transform lives through education,” an overjoyed Principal Collette Barnes said as she lauded MBJ Foundation for its contribution.

She knows just how much it will mean for her youngest students when the new block becomes operational.

“When we have a dedicated space for the infant department, you have them better prepared for grade one. So they transition better to grade one because, of course, we have the teachers there preparing them and getting them ready for primary school,” she told the Jamaica Observer.

Infant school students now share the same space as those at the primary level and that is far from ideal.

“We just have them in some classes that are not really fitted for them. The Early Childhood Commission really stipulates that they should be in specialised designed classrooms and currently we have them in the upper school, just housing them for now,” Barnes explained.

She and her team have already started working on the steps needed to get construction of the much-needed classroom block under way.

“We did our building plan already, it’s at the parish council now being ready to getting it passed; so in the new year we will start the construction of the new building,” she revealed.

The new block will consist of three classrooms and three bathrooms that will serve the cohort of students aged four to five. There are now 87 of them enrolled.

The donation was made to the school as part of MBJ’s 20th anniversary celebrations. According to MBJ CEO Shane Munroe, it is their marquee project

“We want to give Miss Barnes and the school the assurance that this is only the beginning and that we have adopted the school,” he said during the recent handover ceremony for the funds.

He said the educator had an idea of what she wanted to do and MBJ was glad to step in and help. They would have been further along had it not been for the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Now we passed COVID and here we are today, through the MBJ Foundation, we are donating and have raised $30 million towards this project,” he told those gathered just outside the departure area of the Sangster International Airport.