History

In October 2007 during our stay in Kingston we met the founder of the Trenchtown Reading Centre (TRC), Roslyn Ellison from Canada. Amazed by the concept we went down in the next days and we were overwhelmed by what we saw: a light inviting room with fans, bookshelves with an amazing collection of new and suitable books for children and adults, related to the life and surrounding of the people. Caribbean, African American, African children books, biographies, nature and animal books, scientific literature, music books – a fascinating collection for various levels of age and knowledge you wouldn’t expect in a library in one of Kingston’s most notorious ghettos!

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Immediately we were convinced that we wanted to support the Reading Centre, which is a private and non-profit organisation, build from the ground up together with the community. We kept on visiting it and found out how they got started in 1993, how they work, which problems the institution faces and we soon started to think about how we can help the TRC…

Back in Germany our enthusiasm was met by others and we founded the registered non-profit organisation HELP Jamaica! e.V. This organisation legally set the foundation to raise funds to help the TRC. Encouraged by the success the vision of establishing more similar libraries and education centres all over Jamaica developed. We will continue to support the TRC and additionally started to work towards building our own HELP Jamaica!-operated education centre in the near future!

In March 2009 we founded and registered a local branch of HELP Jamaica! in Jamaica. This non-profit organisation shall first and foremost direct and guide the implementation of our aims in Jamaica and secondly be involved in raising funds with the organisation of local charity events and the acquisition of local sponsors and companies to support the work of HELP Jamaica!

Right now we are in the final process of registering a next branch of HELP Jamaica! in the US and are approaching the step of building our first own HELP Jamaica-operated center in the Community of ‘Cassava Piece’ in Kingston.

Check out the projects section for updates and to see what we are currently working on and which future projects we plan to establish.