Jobs coming for lifeguards, cooks, tour guides
ONE OF the social enterprises nurtured under the Social Enterprise Boost Initiative by the JN Foundation and the US Agency for International Development, the Bunkers Hill Cultural Xperience, relies on the resources of the Bunkers Hill community and its surrounding hamlets for sustenance. Consequently, more than 90 per cent of its food and 100 per cent of its human resources come from the community.
“We are going to need more support from the community,” Clover Gordon said, as the attraction, which recently received its permit from the National Environment and Planning Agency and is in the process of applying for an operating licence from the Jamaica Tourist Board, prepares for its official opening to the public in July.
“At that time, we may be needing a hundred pounds of chicken, so they will need to increase supplies; therefore, if Jane don’t have, Mr Peter will have next week,” she explained.
The operation provides an employment and production boon for Bunkers Hill, giving its mainly farming constituents an additional source of income. It already employs 10 people part-time; and with its upcoming launch and expansion, there will be the need for additional cooks, tour guides, lifeguards and others.
For Kemar, who travels daily to work miles away in Hanover at the Tryall Club, it provides an income during the “off season,” when visitor bookings are low at the high-end resort and there is no employment for him.
“It’s good employment here,” he says. “It uplifts the community and gives us work.”
However, more important to him and
Alexander, another young male resident employed as a tour guide, it allows them to discover aspects of their community and its indigenous culture that were not well known to them.
IDEA CAME FROM DREAM
For the Gordons, this historical introspection and cultural preservation is a primary objective of their Bunkers Hill Cultural Xperience, which literally came to Mrs Gordon in a dream some four years ago.
Beyond simply generating employment and economic activity in the community, the registration and inclusion of folk groups, such as the Deeside Cultural Group and the
Wakefield Tambo Group, are essential to maintaining the cultural authenticity which the Gordons want to sustain at Bunkers Hill Cultural Xperience.
Preserving and promoting cultural authenticity of the Bunkers Hill Cultural Xperience is the primary objective of the Gordons.
Jamaicans living overseas have the opportunity to contribute to the development of the Bunkers Hill Cultural Xperience by investing in the JN Bank Diaspora Certificate of Deposit, from which a percentage of the interest earned will be matched and reinvested into businesses being nurtured by the Social Enterprise Boost Initiative through the JN Foundation.