(Posted 5:30 a.m., April 14)
Student group continues annual March Break mission to Jamaica
By Fred Sherwin
Orléans Online

Melanie Burke hugs one of the new friends she made on her trip to Jamiaca during the March Break as part of Jeun'Espoir Jamaique. Photo supplied

For the past 13 years a group of students, largely from Garneau High School, have spent their March Break doing humanitarian work in one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Kingston, Jamaica.

Projet Garneau was started in 1998 by a group of former Garneau High School teachers. The basis of the project was to give young people a cultural experience through a humanitarian initiative in a Third World environment.

Former Garneau teacher André Clermont took over the initiative in 2001 and changed the name to Jeun'Espoir Jamaique.

Over the years, more than 150 students have spent their March Break building modest homes for local residents, renovating existing facilities including the local school, and visiting an orphanage and local old folks home.

This year two groups visited Kingston as a group of students from Collège catholique Samuel-Genest joined the Garneau gang for the first time.

Twenty-four students in all made the trip including 17-year-old Melanie Burke who first learned about Jeun'Espoir Jamaique when n earlier group of students presented a slide show at the school.

"The idea of going to a country and actually doing something that could change other people's lives and do it firsthand really caught my attention," says Burke who signed up for the project last June along with 12 other girls and two guys who made up the Garneau contingent.

The two groups worked on separate projects, but roomed together at the local monastary which has hosted the students since the project's inception..

The Garneau students were split into three groups which rotated between three different projects building a new home, renovating an existing home and building a playstructure at a local school. They also visited an orphange and and a home for the elderly.

The students had to get up at 7 a.m. each morning and report to their respective job site by 8 a.m. where they worked until 3:30 p.m. or 4 p.m. Their only break came on the sixth day of their visit when they traveled to Ocho Rios, a popular tourist destination located about an hour and a half from Kingston.

For many, going from the slums of Kingston to a tourist mecca like Ocho Rios was a surreal, and in some ways, upsetting experience.

"The day we went it was really busy. The place was filled with tourists from a couple of cruise ships that were there and it was weird because all of this is going on less than two hours from Kingston. It was like, 'What are you guys doing?'. It was our tourist day, but we didn't feel like tourists. We just wanted to get out of there and go back to Kingston," says Burke.

The highlight for most of the students was working with the staff and residents at the Glenhope Orphange which cares for abandoned and abused children or adolescent girls. The also got to build a play structure at a local school.

Burke says she will never forget the looks on the kids faces when they were finally able to play on the modest new play structure.

`We had to keep shooing them away while we were painting it and then when it was finally dry they all just stormed the thing," says Burke who also made a special friend during her visit.

Among the many kids she interacted with, one young boy made a special connection with the Grade 12 student.

"This one boy followed me everywhere. Every time I arrived at the site he would come and find me and climb on my back. He was no more than six years old. We nicknamed him the spider-monkey. He was my child in Jamaica," says Burke.

While the trip was both emotionally and physically draining, Burke says she would do it again in a heartbeat, and, in fact, she is already thinking about joining Jeun'Espoir's planned mission to Benin, Africa this fall.

"It was one of the best experiences of my life because you get so much out of it, The feeling you get when you're there, you can't get here. It's hard to describe to someone unless they've experienced it themselves. Everything is so different. I see everything in a different light than I did before I left. I appreciate everything I have so much more," says Burke who is now part of a special fraternity -- the Jeun'Espoir fraternity.

(This story was made possible thanks to the generous support of our local business partners.)

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