WHEN Kamike Myers-Pinnock saw the images of destruction in her homeland on social media following the passage of Hurricane Melissa on October 28, she was heartbroken.

“To be honest with you, it literally brought tears to my eyes,” Myers-Pinnock told the Jamaica Observer.

“When I saw the videos and I saw the elderly, and people just saying they needed food, I just could not believe that this was my island home,” added Myers-Pinnock, who owns and operates Tropix Pots Cuisines restaurant in Maryland, United States, where she now calls home.

According to Myers-Pinnock, she decided that she could not just stand by and watch so she quickly joined forces with her friend and community partner Elaine Daley, who is also from Jamaica, to organise a fund-raiser and donation drive dubbed Jamaica Land We Love.

The two women plan to send relief supplies to affected parishes with a focus on Manchester and St James, where they lived.

Myers-Pinnock said what started as a single donation box placed at the entrance of her restaurant to request help from people in her community, grew overnight into a full scale donation drive.

“A lot of people started reaching out to me saying, ‘Hey, we saw what happened in Jamaica, how can we help?’ So at first we put the box out there as I said, ‘I will be going home in a couple weeks, I could take these items down’. But then the calls and e-mail and the DMs [direct messages] got a little bit busier than expected, with people just wanting to help Jamaica. So I said, ‘You know what, let’s just put on a fund-raiser day’,” explained Myers-Pinnock.

She said she called on Daley — who has experience in organising food and wine festivals in Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia — to design flyers, send out press releases, engage local media and non-profit organisations, and the response was overwhelming.

Myers-Pinnock said they have since received offers from multiple charities with pledges of supplies in bulk, including pallets of water, clothing, food, and other basic necessities.

“We literally have an organisation, Loving Hand, Caring Hearts, that is pledging to fill a container for us. So we were thinking boxes and barrels and an organisation says, ‘If you guys can get a container, we can fill it’. So we’re looking to be receiving all of the items that were pledged to us and sorting, packing and getting them onto the shipping company’s truck,” said Myers-Pinnock.

Grateful for the support, Myers-Pinnock and Daley are planing to return home on a three-day mission to help those in need.

Once in Jamaica they will join hands with the non-profit SAMU Foundation which will take charge once they leave.

“They will be working with us in terms of receiving the items from me and they will be helping me on the ground distributing. SAMU currently has a team of 10 medical professionals in St James so they’re already on the ground helping Jamaica.

To supplement the donation of items, Myers-Pinnock and Daley also launched a GoFundMe page, which has so far raised US$691.

With additional cash and electronic donations expected to be collected at the fund-raiser, Myers-Pinnock is hoping that the turnout will significantly increase that number.

“We’ll announce donations every hour,” she shared. “The goal is to provide cash vouchers for people who have lost their roofs or are trying to get back to normalcy.”

For Myers-Pinnock, the effort is personal and deeply emotional. “It touched every person connected to Jamaica in some way. If I can impact even 10 or 100 people, I have to do something. Let me do my part,” declared Myers-Pinnock.

Elaine Daley, who is from St James, was quick to lend her expertise to the relief effort in Maryland, USA.