Charity

A St Catherine mother living in a cracked, leaking one-room house told the Gleaner she applied to Food For The Poor for a home five years earlier, paid her taxes and sent her papers, but had heard nothing.

A parliamentary committee questioned the quality of low-income houses built by Food For The Poor under a government partnership funded through PetroCaribe, as the charity sought a US$800 increase per house and denied receiving termite complaints.

A Church of the Nazarene at Ranch, St Mary, took 11 years to build an 800-seat sanctuary, five dormitories and a 120-person campsite. Donors and local pledges funded the work, and the church now uses the site for camps and livelihood projects.

After a 2015 fire destroyed much of the 97-year-old Anglican-run Wortley Home for Girls, a $46 million rebuild by Food For The Poor was set to begin in 2016, raising capacity from 19 to 32 girls.

Food For The Poor’s 2016 5K Run/Walk raised J$53 million, matched by FFP in Florida, to build two-bedroom houses for 60 families, after the 2015 run paid for more than 50 homes.

Food For The Poor built a record 842 houses in Jamaica in 2015, each with two bedrooms, a water tank and solar lighting, as its chairman argued that a home is the first step out of poverty.

A court order halted the foreclosure auction of Harlem’s Atlah Worldwide Church, which faced more than $1 million in unpaid bills and fines, including federal tax liens, while an LGBT youth charity raised money to try to buy it.

St James’ the Greater Anglican Church in Sandys, Bermuda, appealed in 2015 for $53,000 to repair its storm-damaged hall roof after insurance covered just over $100,000 of a $153,000 bill.

At a 2015 Observer Press Club forum, Christian business leaders including Wycliffe’s Oral McCook and Jamaica Broilers’ Robert Levy urged churches to open their accounts to scrutiny, linking tax exemption to accountability under Jamaica’s new Charities Act.

From 2015 Food For The Poor planned to give two fruit trees, from ackee and breadfruit to soursop, with every house or school it donated, starting with a pilot in Spring Pass, St Thomas.

Jamaican reggae star Shaggy was set to headline Food For The Poor’s 20th Building Hope Gala in Boca Raton, Florida, in 2015, raising pledges to build houses for families in Pon Batay, Haiti.

Faith Gospel Hall in rural St Thomas runs a superette to fund a soup kitchen and has built housing units on its property for indigent people, after an elderly member could no longer pay rent, despite break-ins and robberies at the shop.

Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit said he made no apologies for a $500,000 government gift to the Roseau Catholic Cathedral restoration, telling critics it was the Lord who gave the money, as an evangelical pastor called the idea misguided.

A youth resource centre on the grounds of Runaway Bay United Church, started by a Jamaican-Canadian couple and funded from Canada, has offered free after-school classes, meals, internet and football to local children since 2008.

The Sisters of Mercy announced they would stop housing boys at Kingston’s Alpha Boys’ Home by June 2014, citing severe behavioural problems, the high cost of care and funding said to be less than a quarter of what state homes received.