SuperClubs and the Hillsborough Country Public School System of Tampa, West Central Florida, plan to expand ‘their joint ‘Global Education 2000’ multilateral Jamaican education programme of assistance to Jamaican schools.
The initiative, launched in February, 1992, is entering its ninth year of helping three Jamaican schools and hundreds of their students – Sheffield All Age in Westmoreland; and Three Hills Primary and Retreat Primary, both in St Mary.
Through the programme, groups of teachers from Tampa have been coming to Jamaica every year – sometimes twice yearly – repairing the schools, refitting and restocking classrooms with books and stationery, and holding training seminars for teachers and school administrators.
Jamaican teachers reciprocate by going to Tampa on sponsored trips, to hold seminars at schools there, about the island’s culture, folklore and education system.
Joe Issa, SuperClubs’ executive vice president, and Dr Beverly DeMott, an executive education supervisor for over a dozen schools in Hillsborough county, both started the project. They now hail it as “a sparkling success, through which the participating schools and students have benefitted extensively.”
‘Global Education 2000’ has been so popular and successful that Dr DeMott has been researching a programme of expansion and redevelopment for it, to be instituted next year. She declined to disclose details, but promised, “More Jamaican children, and schools, over-all, will benefit from the advanced knowledge we have been gleaning about futuristic international education development.”
Jamaica’s Ministry of Education helps to coordinate ‘Global Education 2000’. SuperClubs provides accommodation, ground transportation and much of the ancillary services their visiting groups require, Issa points out.
The latest group of just under a dozen Hillsborough teacher volunteers, lead by Dr DeMott, spent a week in Jamaica during November, and are due to return this year.
Source: North Coast Times
