One of the major tenants of the Black Coffee‘s Core Values is Community Empowerment! It’s for this reason, we decided to partner with The Stone Foundation, a non profit organization that has been a blessing to the island of Jamaica for almost two decades. They provide solutions for community development by providing healthcare, education, and technology assistance for some of the poorest communities in Jamaica. Amongst a plethora of other amazing services to the community, the Stone Foundation sponsors a school that until the Stone Foundation became involved had never had electricity. Now they have state of the art eco-friendly solar panelling that makes learning much easier and comfortable.
This year Black Coffee traveled to Negril and White House Jamaica to serve the local community alongside the Stone Foundation and Virginia Commonwealth University. Our first event was the school graduation. We cheered the children on, serve them cake and juice, and also surprised them with gift bags of school supplies and toys!
Our final event took us to a bustling city market, in White House, where we set up a free women’s health event. Here we worked with students of Virginia Commonwealth University to provide vision screenings, blood pressure testing, diabetes tests, and sex education.
I had the opportunity to work the check out station, where VCU staff analyzed the results of all of the tests, and provided personalized medical advice. Once successfully checked out of the event, we provided the women with hygiene kits and reading glasses when vision test results recommended them. I assisted staff with providing the proper strength reading glasses based on the vision analysis.
The experience was amazing!
I‘d like to spotlight Kathy Stone of the Stone Foundation for making this incredible experience possible!
Please visit the Stone Foundation‘s website for more information.
www.ourstonefoundation.org
