One Bathroom for 52 Children: A US$254,000 Renovation Transforms a Missionaries of the Poor Home

• Bethlehem, a Missionaries of the Poor home, cares for 52 children with special needs
• Two phases of repairs cost US$254,000, funded by the Digicel Foundation
• A single bathroom was replaced with separate facilities for boys and girls
• The home was certified by the Education Ministry and the child protection agency

For years, 52 children with special needs at Bethlehem Home shared a single bathroom. By November 2022, that had changed. Jamaica Observer columnist Jean Lowrie-Chin reported that the Missionaries of the Poor residence had been transformed by two phases of repairs costing US$254,000.

Lowrie-Chin had first visited Bethlehem 14 years earlier with Father Richard Ho Lung, who founded the Catholic order. She wrote that conditions then were deeply distressing. On her return, she found separate tiled bathrooms for boys and girls, a renovated kitchen and adjoining pantry, painted walls in place of deteriorating partitions, and a laundry fitted with a modern washer and dryer.

The Digicel Foundation paid for both phases. Its global chair, Maria Mulcahy, said simply: “We have to do more.” The home is run by director Brother Prem Sagar, and Brother Alejandro Castaneda is director of apostolates for the order. After the work, the home was certified by the Ministry of Education and Youth and the Child Protection and Family Services Agency.

Education Minister Fayval Williams toured the home. “We cannot overstate the importance of this work being carried out here amongst children, some, as I toured, I could see with multiple disabilities,” she said. She also called for wider support: “We need to create a more caring society that enables us collectively to give our financial, physical, and other forms of support to these children and those who care for them. This is a special calling.”

The building’s troubles did not end there. By early 2025, the Father Ho Lung and Friends Foundation was raising money to repair Bethlehem’s roof, a reminder that church-run care homes are property that needs constant upkeep, not a one-off gift.

Much of Jamaica’s residential care for disabled children and destitute adults sits in buildings owned and run by church groups. When those buildings decay, the people inside have few other places to go. For donors in the diaspora, businesses and congregations, funding bathrooms, kitchens and roofs may be less visible than a feeding programme. But it is what keeps a home licensed, safe and open.