COJO - 'one one cocoa full basket'

Published: Monday | July 19, 2010

Oftentimes we neglect to give to someone less fortunate because we feel that if you don't have millions to spare, a gift is not worth giving.

Not so for Gary Williams who lives the Jamaican maxim, 'one, one cocoa full basket'.

Williams emigrated to the United States of America (USA) in 1989, exchanging a Kingston, Jamaica address for Queens, Jamaica, not forgetting his native country.

It was while working as a customer service agent for British Airways in New York that he pooled his modest resources with a group of friends and began canvassing organisations to donate teaching equipment, books and electronic items to children's homes in Jamaica.

Children of Jamaica Outreach (COJO), the not-for-profit organisation founded by Williams in 1994, has, for the past 16 years, deliberately focused on needy children in Jamaica, dedicating human and financial resources to make a difference in their lives.

What began as a once-annual shipment of books, crayons, colouring books and T-shirts, has evolved into even more substantial gifts of academic scholarships, computers and sports gear valued at millions of dollars.

COJO has been instrumental in establishing libraries and computer laboratories and generally improving the life chances for students of schools like the Louise Bennett Coverley All-Age and residents of Alpha Boys' Home, Glenhope Place of Safety, Marigold Child Care Centre, City of Refuge, St Augustine Place of Safety for Boys, the Musgrave Girls' Home, Mannings Child Care Facility, Homestead Place of Safety and the National Children's Home.

COJO scholarship funding is currently assisting one student from Holy Childhood High and another from Wolmer's Boys' in completing their secondary school education.

Williams credits the generosity of people in Jamaica and the USA, including non-Caribbean nationals, for COJO's success.

Earlier this year, at a 15th-anniversary luncheon in Kingston, the organisation honoured three 'pioneering sponsors': Eldon Bremner, general manager, The Jamaica Pegasus hotel; William Rodgers, senior director, government and community relations, Air Jamaica, and Winston Bowen, director, Child Development Agency.

"The three," Williams said, "have supported COJO from day one and were instrumental in helping us to help the children who need it."

COJO has previously honoured several individuals and corporations in the USA and Jamaica, including Gordon 'Butch' Stewart, chairman of the Sandals Group, and JetBlue Airways.

COJO also raises funds to finance scholarships and learning tools for Jamaican children. Their main event, a gala dinner held in New York each December, will, this year, mark 16 years.

For further information about COJO, including sponsorship opportunities, visit www.cojokids.org.