标签： Jamaica

For most parents, a child’s first birthday marks a joyous milestone of growth and new beginnings. For Peta-Gaye Forbes Robinson, a Jamaican mother based in Kingston, that celebration was quickly followed by an unsettling turn that would reshape the course of her entire family’s life. Just two months after her son Shadrach turned one, the toddler who had already mastered reciting the full alphabet and counting to 20 suddenly lost nearly all his verbal skills, reduced only to forcing out the single letter “E”.

Alarmed by the obvious developmental regression and repeated concerns from loved ones that Shadrach was not hitting key growth markers, Robinson sought medical evaluation immediately. After months of waiting for a assessment with a behavioural specialist, there was no clear path forward. It was not until Shadrach turned three that a formal neurological diagnosis delivered a devastating blow: the young boy was non-verbal autistic, medical professionals told the couple, and he would never speak, requiring 24/7 lifelong care.

Robinson, however, refused to accept this grim prognosis. With a professional background in early childhood education, she began diving deep into autism research to better understand her son’s condition and explore every possible intervention. At the time, she held a demanding corporate role that kept her away from home for long hours. Though she repeatedly felt a spiritual pull to leave her job to focus full-time on Shadrach, fear of the financial strain on her family kept her from making the leap, and she left her son’s progress in the hands of public state institutions. For years, little improvement came.

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic amplified that persistent calling to resign, turning a quiet nudge into an unavoidable conviction. A follow-up assessment confirmed what Robinson had feared: Shadrach had made almost no progress in years, and the couple’s hope was wearing thin. That was when Robinson made the irreversible decision: she walked away from her corporate career, pulled Shadrach from traditional school, and launched a structured homeschooling programme with support from local homeschooling collective Jamaica Life Learners.

The early months of homeschooling were fraught with struggle and frustration. Robinson came close to abandoning her efforts entirely, and one Friday, overwhelmed, she decided to set aside all formal lessons. It was in that moment of pause that she followed spiritual guidance to test a new phonics-based speech technique, grouping letters by vowels and consonants to build foundational speech skills. At first, Shadrach showed no response. Robinson, frustrated, sent him off to play. Minutes later, she heard a clear, quiet voice repeating the vowels: A, E, I, O, U. Shadrach was five years old, and that small moment was the turning point the family had waited years for.

The most cherished milestone came soon after, when Robinson cried alone in Shadrach’s room, wondering if she would ever hear her son say “I love you”. As she turned away weeping, she felt Shadrach approach, and a jumbled, quiet phrase reached her ears: “I love you.” Over and over, he repeated the words, growing louder and clearer each time. To this day, Shadrach, now 10, repeats the phrase to his mother constantly – a gift she never takes for granted.

Following that breakthrough, Robinson continued to adapt her approach, drawing on targeted resources and integrating consistent spiritual intercession into her work with Shadrach. Over five years of steady effort, the transformation extended far beyond speech. Once, the boy’s severe sensory issues meant five adults had to restrain him just to clean his teeth; he refused all but a tiny handful of foods due to texture aversions, and was triggered by common sounds and numbers. Today, Shadrach eats a full range of foods, manages his sensory challenges independently, and attends a mainstream public school. A recent re-evaluation only diagnosed a mild expressive receptive language gap, and he is fully capable of caring for himself. An aspiring engineer with a passion for aviation, he regularly repairs old gadgets and phones around the house, and can identify aircraft make and model mid-flight just by looking up at the sky.

Buoyed by her son’s unimaginable progress, Robinson founded Gifted Minds in 2021, a home-based, individualised intervention programme that supports other children on the autism spectrum across Jamaica. What began as a personal journey to save her own son has become a mission to bring hope to other families who have been given devastating diagnoses.

In encouraging other parents facing similar struggles, Robinson urges people not to get stuck in grief or the question of “why me.” Instead, she advises shifting focus to asking “how” – how to learn, how to adapt, how to advocate for your child. It is that shift, she says, that opened the door to every breakthrough her family has experienced, turning a prognosis of lifelong dependence into a story of radical transformation and purpose.

On a dedicated Saturday mission, a volunteer team from the Allied Protection Foundation set out for western Jamaica to kick off critical restoration work at DRB Grant Demonstration Basic School, located in Montego Bay’s Catherine Hall neighborhood. This hands-on community improvement project forms a core part of the foundation’s official programming for Jamaica’s 2026 Labour Day, a national observance centered on voluntary public service.

In an official media statement released two days ahead of the mission, the foundation detailed the urgent need for the work: more than six months after Category 5 Hurricane Melissa swept through the island on October 28 of the previous year, the rural basic school continues to grapple with lingering storm damage that has disrupted learning for its young students.

The initiative is not a solo effort, the foundation noted. It has partnered with three local Jamaican organizations—JN Foundation, Rainbow Appliances, and Maa Sai Enterprise Limited—to pool resources and labor for the project. When completed, the team will have refreshed the school’s campus with new coats of paint and vibrant, student-centered murals designed to brighten the learning environment. Beyond structural improvements, the collaborative group also donated two critical assets to the school: a 1,000-gallon water storage tank to address ongoing water access challenges left by the hurricane, and a 32-inch smart television to support digital learning for the student body.

This project marks a key milestone for the newly launched Allied Protection Foundation, which recently consolidated all of the parent organization’s major charitable programming under one centralized umbrella to streamline impact. Beyond the Montego Bay hurricane recovery work, the foundation manages two other long-standing education-focused initiatives: a daily school breakfast program serving students at Clan Carthy Primary School in St Andrew, and the Donald Williams Scholarship, which provides financial support to eligible Jamaican students pursuing further education.

In closing, the foundation emphasized that all of its programming, from disaster recovery to ongoing education support, grows out of the parent company’s deep, long-standing commitment to advancing education, driving inclusive community development, and upholding meaningful corporate social responsibility across Jamaica.

For the first time in a decade and a half, commercial beekeepers across Portland, Jamaica have walked away from their hives empty-handed during April – the parish’s most productive month for honey collection. According to Bernard Walker, president of the Portland Bee Farmers Association, this unprecedented disruption traces directly to a shifting seasonal blossoming schedule of local flora across the northeastern parish.

Walker estimates that the missed first major honey flow of the year has cost local producers roughly 1,000 gallons of unsold honey, equal to a minimum revenue loss of $14 million Jamaican dollars. In interviews, he explained that long-standing regional blooming cycles have broken down in recent years: where mango trees once consistently produced full blooms across December, the crop now reaches peak blossoming as early as March. By the time April arrives, mango flowering has long tapered off, and while other local crops do blossom later in the season, their combined bloom period shifted entirely to March, leaving bees with no major nectar source as harvest season traditionally begins.

This disruption has also created an unusual supply gap across Jamaica. Following Hurricane Melissa’s damage to honey production in western Jamaica, local food manufacturers and the Jamaica Promotions Corporation have flooded Portland’s producers with requests for additional honey to make up for regional shortages. But Walker says that after checking in with all member farmers during the association’s monthly second-Thursday meeting, there is currently no harvestable honey available anywhere in the parish. Producers are now a full seven weeks behind their standard harvesting calendar.

Portland’s beekeepers typically collect honey four times annually between March and September. Having missed the critical March-April opening harvest, the association now anticipates holding the first collection of 2024 in June – a date that would normally mark the second harvest of the year. Even with this adjusted schedule, Walker warns that yields are expected to be far lower than average.

Compounding the risk is the timing: June marks the official start of the Atlantic hurricane season, and with production already lagging far behind normal, even a weak tropical depression could spell total disaster for the parish’s producers. Walker noted that a single major storm could end the entire honey harvesting season for Portland, potentially resulting in the first year on record with zero commercial honey production from the parish. For full-time commercial beekeepers, who rely on honey sales as their primary source of household income, such an outcome would be financially devastating. “This is what we do for a living,” Walker emphasized.

In the wake of recent hurricanes Beryl and Melissa, the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF) and the national Ministry of Agriculture stepped in to provide emergency supplementary feed for Portland’s bee populations, a move that helped stabilize colonies after a prolonged dry period. Moving forward, Walker says the association plans to stretch the remaining feed stock through 2026 to support colony health through future dry seasons. Adequate nutrition allows queen bees to lay more eggs during dry periods, cutting rates of colony collapse caused by starvation, he explained.

To address the root cause of shifting nectar supplies, the association is organizing community-wide tree planting events over the upcoming Labour Day weekend. The initiative aims to expand native foraging habitat for bees and ensure consistent, long-term food sources for hives across the parish. Walker is urging all local residents and community groups to participate, noting that healthy bee populations do more than produce honey: they are foundational to global and local food security. As the world’s primary pollinators, bees are responsible for fertilizing roughly one-third of all food consumed by humans.

“To make sure our bees have enough feed, the general public has to play a major role,” Walker said. “Even in urban neighborhoods and housing developments, if every household plants one or two fruit trees like ackee or mango, that small change adds up to make a huge difference for local bees.”

The association has also adopted a new adaptive practice to boost colony nutrition: mixing moringa powder, a nutrient-dense plant-based supplement, into sugar syrup for bee feed. Early results have been promising, Walker says, with bees readily accepting the supplement. Moringa’s high nutritional content, wide availability, and ease of cultivation across Jamaica make it an ideal local solution that cuts reliance on imported feed, while also improving food safety safeguards for the industry.

As producers wait for June’s adjusted harvest, the entire community of Portland beekeepers is holding out for a quiet, storm-free Atlantic hurricane season to avoid a total annual loss.

A brutal mid-afternoon shooting at Jamaica’s Papine Market has left a well-loved local staff member dead and sent shockwaves through the adjacent Mona Commons community, prompting Kingston’s top official to plead for restraint amid public grief and anger.

Colleen Bernard, a long-serving supervisor at the popular public market, was gunned down in a public attack this past Friday. Within hours of the shooting, law enforcement officers launched an urgent manhunt for the perpetrator. Pursuing the suspect across the area, police eventually intercepted the shooter, who was wounded in the confrontation and remains hospitalized for treatment as of the latest updates.

Two days after the killing, Kingston Mayor Andrew Swaby — who also serves as chair of the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation (KSAMC) — released a public video address directly to residents of the nearby Mona Commons neighborhood. In the message, Swaby urged community members not to resort to vigilante justice in response to Bernard’s death, emphasizing that official investigations remain in their early stages.

“In moments like this, it’s only natural for people to want to form their own conclusions about what happened, but right now, many critical details are still unconfirmed,” Swaby said in the address. He stressed that the responsible path forward is to let trained police investigators complete their work unimpeded by community unrest.

Swaby also shared that the entire KSAMC workforce is reeling from the unexpected loss of one of their own. “Colleen was an exceptional, dedicated worker,” he said, describing the attack as a pointless act of violence. “It’s senseless that someone would walk into a busy public market, take her life, and then try to run away.”

The mayor publicly praised responding police officers for their rapid work that led to the suspect’s apprehension. Looking ahead, Swaby confirmed that municipal leaders are already reviewing next steps to improve public safety at the market, and will arrange professional mental health counselling for both market staff and vendors who witnessed the traumatic incident.