RJR Communications Group

We also made an appeal to well-meaning Jamaicans and Jamaican companies to join us in reaching out to our heart-broken neighbours in Haiti - ripped apart by a massive earthquake.

Within hours, we had dozens of people at our doors with food, clothing, water and other supplies; within the first two days we were under pressure to manage.  However, just about then we also had many people coming to volunteer their time.  Staff members from Courts at Cross Roads, members of the Youth for Christ, cadets from Kingston College and many others have been helping.

Most of all, our own staff at RJR, TVJ and MMJ got involved and donated, sorted, packed and trucked more than 15 truck-loads of gifts from our fellow Jamaicans to the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM), while Courts collected and trucked tones of material from their branches island wide and Scotiabank did the same.

Many other companies, too numerous to mention in this short statement made valued and appreciated contributions and we thank them.

We have a responsibility to ensure that the cash that has, so far, been donated should also be put at to the urgent help of the Haitian people.

Therefore, on behalf of the people and the companies that have given cash we at RJR consider the best candidate for our first disbursement of cash to be Food For the Poor (FFP).

FFP is at present hosting the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) team at their compound in Haiti – a country where they have been working with the poor for more than 25 years.  Their standard procedures meet the requirement of transparency and accountability which we require for ourselves and for us to transparently share with the members of the public who donated. 

This afternoon we are pleased to present them with two cheques: one for US$1,000 from the UD$ account at Scotiabank and the other for JD$10-million from the Jamaican dollar account at Scotiabank.

Earlier today, on behalf of Courts Jamaica, we also handed over 100 mattresses to FFP to ship to Haiti next week.

All this has been made possible by the people of Jamaica who have given so willingly and generously and we at RJR thank them.  From the elderly woman on the first day who brought a tin of mackerel, a tin of sardines, one tin of corned beef and about a pound of rice as her contribution, to the student from Hydel who came with his colleagues and delivered many boxes of foodstuff and clothing, but most importantly, who prayed for the children killed, injured and suffering in Haiti, we thank you.

Finally, I have in the last few days often recalled how we in Jamaica started the week of January 10, 2010 as a people, frustrated, worried, some depressed and down in spirit because we were facing an IMF agreement, new taxes, higher prices and many of us were saying we don’t know how much more we could bear – yet by January 14, four days later we realized that we had so much; we were so blessed that we could give and give generously tones of food, tones of clothing, and millions of dollars.  We had life and we had family; we had our homes and we had dreams that still seemed within our reach.  We so richly blessed and far less stressed that millions of our neighbours a few hours across the waves in Haiti.

Let us count our blessings fellow Jamaicans and let us continue to share those blessings with our brothers and sisters in Haiti but also the less fortunate right here.

Gary Allen

Managing Director

January 22, 2010