As Barbados prepares to kick off a new academic year, a homegrown private sector firm has stepped forward to deliver critical support to vulnerable children – and is now calling on fellow businesses to join the growing movement to ease the financial burden on low-income Barbadian families.
Packaging Centre Ltd., a local Barbadian business, has quietly run its back-to-school assistance initiative for years, flying under the public radar until now. The company recently held a small handover ceremony to distribute school supplies and nutritious snacks to children facing economic hardship, marking the first time the program has been highlighted publicly.
Warehouse manager Simon Cho, who led the event with Minister of Legal Affairs and Criminal Justice Michael Lashley, also the Member of Parliament for the City of Bridgetown, in attendance, shared that the project first launched in 2022 in partnership with the Honourable Kirk Humphrey. For the past three years, the team intentionally kept their efforts private, but made a deliberate choice to go public this term to catalyze broader collective action.
“We first started this back in 2022 with the Honourable Kirk Humphrey. We’ve been doing this for multiple years, but we never put it in the news,” Cho told reporters. “The decision to speak publicly now is so that we can get other companies to come together and start doing this on a bigger scale.”
The donation focuses on the fundamental tools children need to thrive in the classroom, including backpacks, textbooks, writing instruments, and other core supplies that many low-income families struggle to afford ahead of the new term. Beyond direct assistance, Cho emphasized that cross-sector collaboration between private businesses and the government is the only sustainable way to meet widespread community needs.
“It’s important that the private sector and government work together because we can’t put all the pressure on government to do everything,” Cho explained. “It’s important that the private sector pick up and help as much as they can within our means, obviously, and do our part to move Barbados forward, especially when it comes to investing in our children, the foundation of our nation.”
Minister Lashley, whose constituency covers Bridgetown, hailed Packaging Centre as a model of responsible corporate citizenship, noting that the program fills a critical gap for vulnerable families across the capital and surrounding urban areas. Lashley added that he expects the initiative can grow into a coordinated partnership between elected representatives and private businesses to expand support to more communities across the parish of St Michael.
“I first got a call from the Packaging Centre in relation to this programme. I said, you know what, this would be a good relationship, where you have the MP for the City and other MPs throughout the urban corridor where there’s a need for this type of programme that I can partner with,” Lashley said, adding that parents across Bridgetown and neighboring districts have already expressed strong appreciation for the effort.
The MP also announced that his own constituency office will launch its independent back-to-school support program next Monday in Bridgetown, noting that growing corporate participation both expands the number of families that can be reached and encourages more businesses to contribute to the cause.
“I am pleased that other corporate companies are coming forward too. I must say that we also are about to launch our own back-to-school programme, I think on Monday in the City too,” Lashley said. “We welcome this because not only would it raise the volume [of support], but it also creates the awareness to entice and to attract more businesses to come forward to engage in this positive activity.”