- Sunbeam Children’s Home for Boys housed 55 boys despite a licence for 40
- Its manager put the food bill at $600,000 a month and school costs at $30,000 a day
- A second facility for younger boys was planned for Spanish Town
- A local church youth group delivered food, clothes, toiletries and toys
Sunbeam Children’s Home for Boys, at Spring Village in Old Harbour, St Catherine, is licensed to house 40 boys. In December 2022 it had 55, with five more expected within days, the Jamaica Observer reported. Its manager, Desmond Whitely, described the 46-year-old institution as the largest boys’ home in Jamaica by number of residents. “There’s none bigger than us; some may be larger in building but not in terms of numbers,” he said.
The newspaper visited when the Christian Youth Missionary Society of the New Hope Seventh-day Christian Church brought clothes, food, toiletries and toys. “Sunbeam boys’ home is right in our church community so we didn’t have to look very far,” said the society’s president, Courtnae Faulknor. Its vice-president, Antonette Royal, said believers “should be good stewards of what we have been given and share what we have with those who are less fortunate than us.”
Whitely was frank about what it costs to keep the boys housed, fed and in school. “It is costing us right now $30,000 per day to send the boys to school. The food bill for Sunbeam is $600,000 per month. The boys eat a bag of rice every four days… The electricity bill here is quarter million dollars each month, and the staff salaries are way over a million dollars,” he said. He credited faith and donations for keeping the home going: “It’s by God’s grace and provision that we have been able to survive.”
Plans were under way to open a new facility in Spanish Town in January to house younger boys separately before they moved to the main home. Whitely welcomed the church link. “We want to build a partnership because it’s very important that Christian values are infused into the lives of the boys,” he said.
The figures matter. A home holding 15 more boys than its licence allows is under pressure on space, staff and utilities, and a second site is a property decision as much as a care decision. For churches and diaspora groups thinking about how to help children in care, the numbers Whitely gave are a guide: electricity alone runs to about a quarter of a million dollars a month. Covering a utility bill, funding a dormitory or helping fit out the Spanish Town site would reach the boys directly, and would ease the overcrowding a Christmas hamper cannot.
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