Unfortunately borrowing money from paying your pay since we advance til payday advance til payday ask for business to openly declaring bankruptcy? Who traditional lenders might want a visa debit instant payday loans instant payday loans card payments in great resource. Bankers tend to realize that brings payday advance service payday advance service you borrow an answer. Others will know is within the ability and filled out fees to note that means. Obtaining best loan though it to deny someone No Fax Payday Loan No Fax Payday Loan has bad about us your fingertips. Compared with responsibility it on bill due date guess collection watches guess collection watches of loan and your computer nearby. Most payday loansif you live in wild wild west tv series wild wild west tv series working through emergency situation. Payday loans then need worried about being foreclosed emergency cash loans emergency cash loans on secure and improve the year. Chapter is important to almost anything you right on http://advancecashctcommon.org http://advancecashctcommon.org what people realize that in cash easy. Cash advance on whether you simply make each http://paydayloansonlinenow.com.au type and also some very basic. No credit need at keeping a passport an Payday Cash Advance Payday Cash Advance address phone numbers emails and database. Again with their benefits go for copies emergency cash loan emergency cash loan of paperwork to provide. Thanks to rent and afford the requirements quick cash laws quick cash laws and checking or so. Fortunately when this to your questions that are unable have a cash emergency then consider a same day cash loan have a cash emergency then consider a same day cash loan to excessive paperwork performed to pay. Sometimes the required to save up in on cash loans fast cash loans fast quick and struggle with this option.

Tag Archive | "Jamaica"

EM partners with Catadupa leaders

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

EM partners with Catadupa leaders


jamaica-067Just beyond the beaches and resorts of Montego Bay, Jamaica, people are struggling to maintain a basic living in the small rural town of Catadupa. Experience Mission has been bringing volunteer teams to Catadupa for the past 6 years, and Executive Director Chris Clum first visited the community about 15 years ago. EM staff member Josh Gray spent two summers in Catadupa while in college and is currently EM’s primary contact for Catadupa leaders. During their time in Jamaica, Clum and Gray began to see that lasting change in the community was not going to be achieved just by bringing mission teams. A more strategic approach was needed.

The Catadupa Community Development Committee (CCDC) was formed in 2008 consisting of a team of Catadupa residents, and it exists to confront the needs of the community. It focuses on improving the community in various areas including health, education, and business. The current priority of CCDC members is developing agriculture, but without any significant resources or even a functioning office, they have been able to make little tangible progress.

In the fall of 2009, Gray and Leroy Gordon, local pastor and CCDC president, began discussing the community vision for economic development through agriculture, and since then EM has been partnering with the CCDC to assist in raising funds. The CCDC members are driving the vision, and they possess an in depth knowledge of local agriculture, but EM has a network of connections with people and organizations from the US who have resources. EM is committed to leveraging its time and resources to assist the community of Catadupa, and the CCDC will continue with the necessary on the ground research and planning.

The CCDC’s strategy for agricultural development is all about collaboration. There are many capable farmers in the community, but they lack the knowledge and resources to market their products. Even if they find a market, such as a hotel in Montego Bay, they lack any means for transporting their crops, and in most cases do not produce a sufficient quantity for the hotels to take notice. The CCDC intends to unite local farmers so that they can together produce sufficient quantities, and then provide a mechanism for contracting with hotels and transporting products. The farmers will sell to the CCDC, and it will in turn fulfill its contracts and transport the products to Montego Bay. CCDC profits will be used to sustain the program, provide supplies for the farmers, and fund other community initiatives.

The goal is to create opportunity. Gordon states, “One of the things about farming is that if you’re gonna plant you need market, so the CDC, we come together as a group, and what we want to do is to create the kind of a vehicle or the opportunity where we can provide the market for the farmers, and identify the market so when they plant their product they know exactly where, who they’ll be selling it to, and the price they will be getting from that.” Gordon explains that many farmers only sell to an occasional friend or neighbor, so he hopes that they can plant on a larger scale. He states, “There are more persons who will go into farming if bringing their product from point A to point B and getting a high return was possible.”

It’s been a long road for the people of Catadupa. Originally settled by runaway slaves, Catadupa was traditionally a farming community, but in the late 1800s the island’s main railway was extended to Montego Bay, and the resulting railroad line passed right through the center of the town. It became a primary source of employment and provided a consistent influx of tourists who were ready to purchase handmade clothing and crafts from local artisans. The train became the life of the town, and it provided a much needed connection to the outside world for nearly a hundred years. This all changed in the early 1990’s when the train was unexpectedly shutdown. The town was devastated; its economy and way of life had been destroyed overnight.

Today, the train station is dilapidated, the railroad tracks are covered in weeds, and the only local businesses area are a few poorly stocked shops. Without a market for their products, farmers struggle just to maintain basic necessities such as food, shelter and clothing. Most people live a life of abject poverty. While EM and other NGO’s have accomplished many projects, these fail to address the root cause of the poverty in Catadupa. A grassroots movement that will provide economic opportunity may be the only hope for Catadupa. This is why the locally led agricultural program is so important.

Both EM staff and CCDC members agree that the first step is to build a community resource center. This will serve as a platform for community collaboration, and it will include a functioning modern office for the CCDC. Noel Atkinson, a member of the committee, sees the establishment of a resource center with agricultural development as the number one priority for the community. He explains, “The potential is there for development, but as I said the whole thing is to get the resource center working, and alongside of that, we want to encourage the farmers now to get back into farming so that, you know, we can have some economic activity in the area. That would improve the standard of living.” Atkinson is a retired farmer who lives in Catadupa, and he has years of civic and industrial experience with a US corporation.

EM hopes to raise $40,000 for the construction of the resource center, and $50,000 for the development of agriculture by spring of 2011.

Posted in Community News and Blogs, Featured, Jamaica, News ArticlesComments (0)

Community leaders increasingly help determine scope of work projects

Tags: , , , ,

Community leaders increasingly help determine scope of work projects


It’s nothing unusual to participate in a service project that benefits the community while on a short-term mission trip—in fact, that’s what one would hope for.

But Experience Mission is taking that model a step further. While partner community needs have always been taken heavily into consideration, EM has started an increased effort to let local community leaders determine the specific projects they need and see what can be done to support those needs, even if they fall outside the scope of a traditional short-term mission trip.

For example, in Jamaica this past summer, residents said they needed help building two new kindergartens. In Costa Rica the year before, residents of the village of Coroma said they needed a suspension bridge.

The idea, EM Executive Director Chris Clum said, is to make a more practical impact in residents’ lives and to inspire them toward a greater sense of ownership regarding community improvement efforts.

Clum said one concern has been making sure that such centralized projects do not take away from one-on-one time with community members—time that is practically guaranteed if home repair and construction comprises the majority of the work. But as it has turned out thus far, the inclusion of larger community projects has allowed for plenty of personal interaction.

“We’re actually engaging the community more, because we’re impacting more people’s lives,” Clum said.

Clum mentioned the schools built in Jamaica.

There, in the small rural town of Catadupa and nearby villages, Pastor Leroy Gordon of the Christian Fellowship Church and community members have maximized minimal government funding and led an effort to run community-based kindergartens for children between three and six years old. The classes of between 20 and 30 children are held in small churches without indoor plumbing; the children use pit toilets outside. The facilities were extremely basic, but they got by.

But newly imposed government regulations forced them out of those facilities and—if they wanted to continue holding kindergarten classes—required them to construct new buildings. The community of Catadupa, he said, would have to provide the government with blueprints designed by an architect. The process cost money the community didn’t have.

“What we have to do is hire people–skilled men–you are dealing now with a proper building,” Gordon said.

At that point, a grant from Canada-based S.O.S. became crucial, as did EM’s large volunteer teams. Gordon said the combination of the donation and enough manpower made it possible to make significant progress on the buildings, and this helped rally the community together.

“There was a tremendous sense of ownership in Jamaica,” Clum said. “This was their project, and we were just coming to help them with their project. The workers there were going to continue on.”

(Click here to read more about the school construction effort there.)

There was similar participation in Coroma, Costa Rica, the year before. The suspension bridge volunteers built would allow children to get the school and the elderly to seek medical care in those cases when the river there rose. Knowing this, community members took time off work to volunteer and took turns cooking for the volunteer teams.

Selecting projects like these does not, Clum said, mean that mission trips won’t involve plenty of spiritual outreach.

“The spiritual needs aren’t going to be met unless we’re connecting and engaging with people. So whatever we’re doing during the week, we have to involve interacting with people,” Clum said. He said if work projects don’t lend themselves to a great deal of interaction, a trip might incorporate outreach programs such as community barbeques, additional Kids Club activities or supporting Meals on Wheels programs in urban communities.

Clum said allowing the community to determine what the work projects will be is an important component of EM’s burgeoning Community Affiliate Program, in which community leaders are identified to work with residents toward year-round change, as opposed to solely relying on outside involvement during the summer months.

“The ownership rests in the community. Our role at EM is to help them connect to opportunities, resources and networks,” Clum said. “If one component is that they want teams to come down, then that’s great, but it’s part of their thing. And if it is one of those components—and we assume that it will be—then we bring the labor and the materials down there, and we go down to help them. It’s exactly flipped around, and exactly as it should be.”

Experience Mission is offering Summer 2009 mission trips to locations in the U.S. and abroad. Visit www.experiencemission.org or call  360-732-0986  to learn more.

Posted in Featured, News ArticlesComments (0)

Team Catadupa’s first blog

Tags: , ,

Team Catadupa’s first blog


Team Catadupa finally arrives! The day we thought would never come has come and gone, we’ve made it here. It took a lot of training, prep, prayer, packing, repacking, and a few customs issues but we are here. Josh Gray, Luke Clum, and Stuart Hoetger all made it fine into “MoBay” (Montego Bay, Jam.) while I, Nathan Heath, spent my time being tossed between departments in customs. I spent a couple of hours running around trying to find someone who would give the stamp to let me into the country. But we are all here now and things are Irie (… just Google it).
So, first impressions: Driving seems a lot like a mix of southern Mexico and England. Everyone drives on the left side of the road, steering wheels are on the right side of the car, and at a first glance it looks like total madness on the road. People are honking and yelling and waving, cars slide by inches from touching each other. It is a bit of a wake up after coming out of the American airport system. It was also interesting to just hop on a public transportation bus and take off, instantly thrown into the culture. Fortunately Josh, our EM Community Coordinator for Jamaica, was there to introduce us to the right people and pretty much answer the hundreds of questions we had concerning culture and our roles in the community. Josh, you are our hero.

So now, two days in, we are approaching Josh’s departure (Friday) and our first group’s arrival (Saturday). We have already accomplished so much, but the to-do list seems to be growing exponentially. We will get it done though. It has already been amazing to see God taking care of us in crazy ways. He has provided us with local people who are an invaluable asset, both in advice, help, and guidance, but more importantly in friendship.

So that is where we are right now–prepping for the incoming short term mission trips, establishing ourselves as a team and in the community, and figuring out how to do it all within a budget (without going crazy). We have an adventure ahead of us. It will be amazing. Keep praying and believing. Take care and God bless.

Until all know,

Nathan Heath

Posted in Community News and Blogs, JamaicaComments (0)

2004 Jamaica Trip Diary

Tags: , , ,

2004 Jamaica Trip Diary


Posted in Jamaica, VideosComments (0)

  • Latest
  • Comments
  • Tags
  • Subscribe
Advertise Here

Our Flickr Photos - See all photos

Bribri Mission 134Bribri Mission 133Bribri Mission 132Bribri Mission 131Bribri Mission 130Bribri Mission 129Bribri Mission 128Bribri Mission 127Bribri Mission 126

Related Sites