Eight months after Hurricane Melissa tore through large swathes of western Jamaica in October last year, the American Friends of Jamaica (AFJ), a decades-old transnational charitable organization focused on supporting Jamaican communities, has announced that donations from its global network of supporters have pushed total recovery and reconstruction funding past the $10 million mark. The milestone was revealed Saturday, June 6, during AFJ’s flagship annual event, the 2026 Jamaica Charity Gala, held in Miami, one of the most high-profile Jamaican-focused charitable gatherings in the United States each year. The event not only raised additional funds for ongoing relief efforts but also gave attending stakeholders a detailed progress update on reconstruction work across the five parishes hardest hit by the storm.
AFJ’s recovery work is currently concentrated in five western Jamaican parishes: St Elizabeth, Westmoreland, Hanover, Trelawny, and St James. To date, the organization has allocated nearly $2 million toward immediate emergency response efforts. Beyond initial relief, it has funded critical post-storm recovery projects including home re-roofing, school and outdoor learning space repairs, and a targeted farming gift card program designed to help small agricultural producers restore lost income and shore up local food security. Even amid ongoing emergency response operations in April, AFJ awarded 65 new grants totaling nearly $952,000 to support long-term programming across education, healthcare, and economic development sectors across the island.
Along with announcing the funding milestone, the 2026 gala included an awards segment honoring individuals and organizations that stepped up immediately in the wake of the hurricane. Three business and humanitarian leaders were recognized for their rapid and impactful disaster response. The International Achievement Award was presented to Norman Horne, executive chairman of ARC Manufacturing and a native of St Elizabeth. Within two weeks of Hurricane Melissa making landfall, Horne’s firm sourced and shipped critical alloy coils for roofing materials to Kingston, enabling widespread re-roofing work to begin quickly across storm-damaged communities. Two International Humanitarian Awards were also granted: one to Michael Capponi, founder and president of Global Empowerment Mission, whose response team was on the first plane into the affected region after the storm, while mobilizing 3,000 volunteers in Miami and pushing roughly $16 million in emergency aid to Jamaican communities in the first two months post-disaster. The second International Humanitarian Award went to Edward Raine, president and CEO of Food for the Poor. During the event, Raine accepted the award from former U.S. Ambassador to Jamaica Nick Perry, with AFJ executive director Caron Chung and Jamaica’s Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett in attendance. Food for the Poor moved 250 containers of relief supplies into Jamaica through local channels, partnered with 70 regional organizations to deliver aid, and completed critical work to repair and return 22 damaged fishing vessels at Galleon Beach to active service.
Minister Bartlett used the occasion to thank AFJ for more than 40 years of partnership with Jamaica, framing the ongoing hurricane recovery work within the island’s broader national development goals. He outlined the government’s new governance structure for long-term reconstruction, the National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority (NaRRA), which will lead planning for the revitalization of four major hard-hit coastal towns: Black River, Lucea, Montego Bay, and Falmouth. Bartlett emphasized that Jamaica’s national goal is to transition rapidly from post-disaster recovery to achieving full developed nation status within the next 10 years. Addressing gala attendees, he reflected on the storm’s impact: “It bent us as a people, but it didn’t break us.”
AFJ President Wendy Hart attributed the organization’s ability to deliver a rapid, coordinated response to the 43 years of on-the-ground relationship-building it has completed across Jamaica. “That is not a miracle. It is 43 years of relationship building coming due,” Hart told attendees, highlighting the value of longstanding local ties that enable rapid action when disaster strikes. Beyond the program and awards, the event featured a curated silent auction with a broad roster of exclusive items and experiences donated by AFJ’s supporters, including luxury travel packages, fine dining reservations, sports and entertainment access, original artwork, and one-of-a-kind curated experiences. The diverse selection of auction lots reflected the widespread generosity of AFJ’s corporate partners, individual donors, and global network of supporters, with all proceeds going toward the organization’s charitable mission in Jamaica.
Founded more than four decades ago, AFJ operates as a bridge between international donors seeking to support Jamaican communities and local nonprofits, community groups, and policymakers that have on-the-ground knowledge of local needs and effective implementation strategies. In addition to coordinating rapid disaster response when extreme weather events strike, the organization funds ongoing programming across education, healthcare, and economic development, reviewing roughly 100 grant applications from Jamaican nongovernmental organizations each year to fund impactful local projects.