More than one hundred students enrolled at the St. Margaret’s Bay All Age School in Portland are better equipped to improve their literacy and numeracy skills as a result of donations made to the school from the JN Money Transfer (JNMT) via the Jamaica National Building Society (JNBS) Foundation. The school received mobile enrichment carts on recommendation from the Ministry of Education (MOE).
Mobile enrichment carts are expected to increase the performance of students who are performing at levels above their peers, by allowing access to accelerated instruction that will maximize students’ learning potential.
The handover
A handover ceremony was held at the school yesterday (May 8). “The items were funded through donations to the Jamaica Partnership for Education (JPE) from JN Money Transfer clients, primarily Jamaicans, residing in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the Cayman Islands” said an excited Saffrey Brown, General Manager of the JNBS Foundation. She added that, “the initiative is in line with the Foundation’s mandate to support the development of education in Jamaica and its work to supplement the efforts of the Ministry of Education in working to eradicate illiteracy by 2015.”
Principal of the school, Gregory Davis expressed gratitude for the donation: “Through the use of these multimedia tools, students will be engaged in holistic sensory learning, which we know will significantly boost the school’s ability to improve students’ mastery in literacy, which currently stands at 70 percent, as well as numeracy, now at 60 percent.”
“We encourage the teachers, who will be using this exciting new resource, to use the material creatively to unlock the minds of our students; and excite them about the new ways of learning that will encourage them to do well,” said Gabriel Heron, Marketing and Business Development manager at JN Money Services Ltd. (JNMS).
Read Across Jamaica
Employees of the Foundation, JNMS and JNBS’ Port Antonio Branch, carried out reading sessions with students from grades one through to four in support of the ‘Read Across Jamaica’ initiative being carried out across the island for Child’s Month in May by the Jamaica Teachers’ Association.Donna Charles, Member Service Representative of the JNBS Port Antonio Branch, who read to the grade four class, expressed her pleasure at returning to her alma mater to share with the students there. “It is important for all of us who have been blessed with the gift of reading, to play or part and give back to the communities that supported us.”
When was the last time you danced to some Jamaican folk music? Well ... the team was taken down memory lane as we watched the students perform dinki mini and brukins dances; after which we returned to Kingston.