Past students aim to give Godfrey Stewart new bathrooms
Three Godfrey Stewart High School past students have set out to raise US$5,000 (approximately J$635,000) to construct two washrooms for students at the Savanna-la-Mar-based institution.
The fundraiser is scheduled to take place in Westmount Event Centre in Toronto this Saturday, February 24. It will feature Richie Stephens and Cardavid Collin Levy.
Lena Johnson of Toronto, Canada, and two others from New York visited their alma mater Godfrey Stewart High School last August and were devastated.
“It was heartbreaking to see the condition facing students at the school that I have loved and adored so much,” Johnson said.
“The bathrooms were, for the most part, unusable, the roof was falling apart, some pipes did not work, and the toilets needed to be replaced. The two bathrooms were literally crumbling around the students, and the situation continues to get worse. I came back to Canada with one mission, which is to find a way to help,” she said.
Within weeks after returning to Toronto, Johnson called up a few of her friends and they quickly registered the Godfrey Stewart High School Alumni Association International Canada with the Alliance Jamaica Alumni Association Canada.
Richie Stephens says Godfrey Stewart is a great institution that is in need of help.
“When Lena reached out to me, I told her I am willing to do what I can to assist the institution,” Stephens said.
Attempts to contact the school’s administrators proved futile up to press time yesterday.
The Christian community and residents of Montego Bay, St James, will have an opportunity to participate in a religious endeavour against crime in the parish, with the inaugural staging of the Supernatural Encounter Jamaica 2018 mega crusade in April.
The upcoming event, which recently had its official media launch at the Montego Bay Convention Centre, will be held on April 20 and 21. It is being staged by the Trumpet Call Ministries International, the St James Ministers’ Fraternal, and the Miami-based King Jesus Ministries.
The Reverend Mary Wildish, president of Trumpet Call Ministries, said that there is an urgent need for spiritual reformation in Montego Bay and the wider St James, especially with the social ills affecting the parish.
“We know the condition of our nation and of our city, and right now all eyes are on St James. We know we are under a state of emergency, but the Bible says that where there is darkness, there is the greatest light, and I believe God is preparing the ground of this city to experience reformation and which we have been crying out for,” Wildish said.
“Any generation that does not experience a manifestation of the supernatural begins to revert, and so many of our young people are going to the obeah man, going into witchcraft and occultism to seek direction in their lives, yet we know the Church is an entity that carries the true power of God,” Wildish added.