THE number of Jamaicans requesting assistance with food from Food For the Poor Jamaica (FFP) since the onset of the novel coronavirus pandemic has doubled.
As at September, up to 65,000 care packages of food items and hygiene products have been distributed to the nation’s poor, with approximately 300,000 households receiving direct, pandemic-related support, according to FFP’s Finance Director Kivette Silvera.
“In addition to our usual general distribution, since the launch of our COVID-19 relief in March, over 300,000 Jamaicans have benefited. Before the pandemic, we were serving close to 400,000 Jamaicans across the island. Now we are almost doubling that number,” Silvera told the Jamaica Observer in an interview recently.
Silvera explained the need is especially felt in the Kingston and St Andrew and St Catherine metropolitan areas, where the entity has had to adjust by increasing its number of distribution centres to accommodate the large number of people turning up at its main office on Spanish Town Road in St Andrew.
“We had to establish new distribution terminals because we didn’t want all those persons congregating at our doorstep. We established new locations with our partners in close proximity to us, to assist us so that we don’t have the crowd coming to our gates.
“We have about 34 distribution centres across the island, and the reports we are getting from them is that a lot more persons are coming to them because they cannot find a meal,” Silvers explained.
In total, 62,600 food packages and 3,393 hygiene care packages have been distributed since the onset of the pandemic, as well as 800 educational kits and 325 assorted medical items donated to “thousands of individuals and families” islandwide.
Silvera said the organisation’s main focus has been to provide food and hygiene packages, given that an overwhelming majority of individuals showing up have this expressed need.
“Many of the people who show up are persons who have lost their jobs. This was especially earlier in the year when certain communities were under lockdown. A lot of persons came to us needing food. We also get calls on a daily basis from across the island from persons who are in need of assistance,” she said.
In light of the exacerbated economic hardship facing swaths of the population, Silvera said the organisation has been making targeted donations to children’s homes, infirmaries, the security forces, schools, department of correctional services, other non-governmental organisations, as well as the public health sector.
These donations have included personal protective equipment, which included more than 700,000 gloves, 135,000 N95 masks, 330,000 earloop masks, 35 boxes of gowns, 43 boxes of coveralls, and 84 boxes of face shields. Other items such as vitamin C tablets, multivitamin tablets, omega-3 capsules, and cough drops have also been donated to areas in desperate need.
Fifty critical-care monitors and supporting equipment as well as more than 300 hospital mattresses have also been donated to the public health sector.
About 3,000 front line workers, inclusive of porters and community heath aids, as well as tourism sector workers have also benefited from targeted donations of food and hygiene packages, Silvera said.
In spite of the economic hardship, Silvera said that Food For the Poor, one of the island’s largest charity organisations, has managed to secure continued sponsorship and donations from key partners, with more than 5,000 care packages funded through individual donors.
“We were able to get a donor to fund over 2,700 packages to front line health care workers. We also got another donor to sponsor us almost 3,000 packages targeting persons who lost their jobs in the tourism sector. We look at certain communities that are most vulnerable at this time and we find a donor to sponsor that target group.
“People would think that because we are a charity, our donors would be significantly impacted. But we have not had a significant decline in our donations. We have been blessed with committed donors who still assist us, and we are able to maintain our service to the people,” Silvera said.
Last Wednesday, the World Bank reported that “the pandemic and global recession” is expected to push between 88 and 115 million people into extreme poverty.
In the Caribbean and Latin America, this is approximately three million people, according to a United Nations Development Programme Economic Commission report released in May.
With the economic fallout expected to continue, Silvera said that more sustainable projects have been implemented to support farmers and fishermen, as well as, other individuals.
“We don’t want to be just handing out, so we are also pushing projects that are sustainable for persons to be able to feed themselves and feed their families. So our agriculture and fishing department has been very crucial at this time.
“For the farmers, we have a rainwater harvesting project to assist them to keep their farms going. Across the 14 fishing beaches in Jamaica, we are also assisting fishermen so they can go out and fish, come back and sell, and even feed their families.
“We find this to be the more sustainable project right now, in terms of assisting persons to feed themselves,” said Silvera.
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