Gymnastics Association seeks $10m to build new home
The Jamaica Amateur Gymnastics Association (JAGA) is seeking approximately $10 million to establish its first home. They have acquired a 50-year lease on a property at 1 Slipe Road, in what will accommodate a gymnasium and office space for the association. “The Jamaica School of Gymnastics has purchased a pre-fabricated steel structure from China. This is a great achievement as we need more than anything a home for gymnastics, where talented gymnasts from all economic backgrounds can get the highest level of training,” President of JAGA Nicole Grant-Brown told STAR Sports. “We want it to be done by March, but we need about $10 million to complete that project. We don’t have the money and are appealing for assistance in order to raise the funds,” GrantBrown added.
“We have come a far way and hope to partner with other members of Corporate Jamaica to help us raise the funds to put the structure together. Having this facility will help us to develop far more athletes than we are now able to do,” she stressed.
Grant-Brown says that they have to find ways to raise funds as the Sports Development Foundation (SDF), which is a governmentrun agency, has slashed its subvention to the JAGA.
MONTHLY SUBVENTIONS
“We took office in August 2014 with a negative account balance as the SDF had stopped funding the sport of gymnastics. SDF resumed funding us in January 2015 with a deduction in our monthly subven- tions from $175,000 to $107,500. With this major reduction, we had to partner with the clubs, the parents, as well as our senior gymnasts, to assist with most of our projects,” she disclosed.
“Many of our projects, from the outset, seemed impossible, but we were determined to get them done as we were way behind and ran the risk of never being included in any major competition organised by the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) and Pan American Gymnastics Union (PAGU), such as the Olympics, World Cups, CAC Games, Pan Am Games, to name a few. This is due to the fact that we had been out of competition for several years and were no longer affiliated with FIG and PAGU. We, therefore, spent the first couple of months re-registering with FIG and PAGU and became an active organisation as we had lost our affiliation with these bodies,” Grant-Brown also said.