Relief for Hurricane Melissa: Jamaica

Hurricane Melissa hit Jamaica hard last October — over 90,000 households displaced and 239 schools damaged. Since January, our team has been working with partners like UNICEF in Westmoreland, Hanover, and Trelawny, offering affected kids safe, reliable, protective spaces amid the disruption, from a fixed Child-Friendly Space in Bethel Town to mobile teams rotating through ten schools across the affected area. Together with our partners, we went beyond Child-Friendly Spaces, expanding into a broader community-based program reaching caregivers, teachers, and community members with mental health, psychosocial support, and child protection training and information. Between January and May this year, up to 7,500 people took part— kids, parents, teachers, whole communities.

Sometimes, when a community is recovering from disaster, it’s the small moments that speak the loudest. At a caregiver session for parents and teachers in Askenish, participants built a paper "tree of resilience" — starting bare, just trunk and branches. One mother said it looked "like after Melissa." They started talking about what their community needs for recovery, adding key words like “growth”, “endurance”, “tolerance”, “strength”, flourish”, “patience”, “improvise”, self-confidence”, and more as roots and leaves. As the group filled the paper tree in, someone else said it now looked "like rebuilding — it's like a journey to recovery." That's what the group ended up calling the exercise. Another caregiver put it simply: "we are not going to give up."

Thanks to the facilitators and mobilisers who did the daily work of showing up, and to the strong, resilient families of Westmoreland, Hanover, and Trelawny who partnered with us in their toughest moments to take their first steps along the long journey to recovery.