Help-A-Girl

1. The Charity is called Help-A-Girl. This charity was born out of a teacher’s love for her students. The teacher is a Guider and started realizing that there were several girls within her Ranger Unit who were either strapped for cash to pay their tuition or for their Caribbean Secondary Examination Certificate (CXC). Having had financial difficulty herself as a teen growing up the teacher started from the Ranger fundraising annual activity to try to sponsor a student’s CSEC fees. In Jamaica, this is costly. The first student that I spearheaded the funding for via cake and ice-cream sales, the examination fees cost at that time $18,763.00. The parent was very appreciative and took a trip to the school to find me and tell me thanks for helping her daughter. I was further motivated because from all seven subjects sat the student was successful in all. This was back in 2017. The price for eight sitting has skyrocketed since this and though the government helps. The balance is still weighty for students from poor economic backgrounds. Since then it had been an annual event.

Help a girl stay in school. Here in Jamaica teenage pregnancy age band has dropped from 15-16-year olds to as low as 13 -14 years old. Save a girl from becoming illiterate, jobless and possibly ending up in gangs. That is the harsh reality here more women are engaging in gangs and that is because they lack education, hence unemployed. Crime is already a grave issue here in Jamaica. In a 2018 article, more than 400,000 people in Jamaica live in poverty and 14,000 live in extreme poverty. That’s close to 15 per cent of the country’s population who don’t have access to a decent way of survival. Since the COVID-19 Pandemic, it has grown worse. Help-A-Girl and this could put an end to the spiralling crime rate in the near future.

The truth though since the COVID-19 Pandemic I was unable to help a girl. Still, I receive text messages from needy students asking if I could assist them in one way or the other. I was not able to help all of them. Only two students I was able to help out of pocket with some assistance from a few friends. I want to have some funds available for when my students reach out to me. If you help me, fund students, we will have a better Jamaica and by enlarge a world that is impacted by brilliant minds of women who can make meaningful decisions and help to run the family better.

THE VISION

The aim of Help-A-Girl is to promote the development of young people in achieving their full physical, intellectual, social and spiritual potential, as individuals, as responsible citizens and as members of their local, national and international communities. The Method of achieving this Vision of the charity is by providing an enjoyable and attractive scheme of progressive training, based on the Girl Guides Promise and Law, and guided by adult leadership.