SEWA TT to send over 1,000 food buckets to Jamaica

FROM SEWA TT, WITH LOVE: Sewa TT volunteers seal stacked buckets of disaster relief items on Sunday at the Divalia Nagar in Chaguanas, destined for hurricane-ravaged Jamaica.- Photos by Lincoln Holder

About 150 SEWA TT volunteers spent their Sunday at the Divali Nagar site in Chaguanas, packing food and hygiene products into plastic buckets which – sometime this week – will be shipped to Jamaica for distribution to citizens severely impacted by Hurricane Melissa.

After weeks of acquiring the items, the SEWA TT volunteers came out on Sunday to pack them into the buckets which will then be sealed and sent to port for shipment.

SEWA TT, a non-governmental organisation whose motto is "Serving everyone, is serving God," partnered with the Supermarket Association at the end of October.

People shopping at selected supermarket outlets were asked to donate $100, at checkout, to the Sewa TT Hurricane Melissa Caribbean Relief 2025 initiative. You can then donate $100 at checkout.

Monies raised were then spent purchasing specific items from wholesale distributors towards filling an essential relief bucket with food and hygiene products for Jamaicans.

The partnership supermarkets included:

Betterdeal supermarket, Croisee ChaseMart, all Low Cost supermarkets, all Massy Stores, MS Food City, West Bees, Persads D' Food King, Quality Cash & Carry, all S&S Persads outlets, all Xtra Foods supermarkets, all JTA supermarkets and all Tru Valu supermarkets.

These SEWA TT youth volunteers place the official SEWA TT logo on the buckets before they are filled with food and hygiene care items on Sunday at the Divali Nagar in Chaguanas, to be sent to hurricane-ravaged Jamaica.

The essential relief buckets included: food staples (grains, beans, cooking oil, flour and sugar), cooking and flavouring essentials (seasoning powder, salt, baking powder), personal care and hygiene products (soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, toilet paper), health and protection items (medicine, insect repellent, mosquito coils, bandages), and convenience items including candles, salted crackers, and ramen for quick fix meals.

On Sunday, SEWA TT president Revan Teelucksingh said the intention was to send over 1,000 buckets to Jamaica. The value of items in each bucket us between $300 to $400.

"We were very deliberate not to collect donated food items. Over the years, we have come up with a system where we looked at the needs of victims, because in the aftermath of every disaster, there are specific needs. We came up with a product we call the food bucket which fulfils these needs," Teelucksingh told Newsday.

He said these buckets are sealable, pest-proof, waterproof, easy to lift, stackable and can be reused.

Senior SEWA TT official Varuna Samaroo, left, oversees the packing of food and hygiene care items into buckets with other SEWA volunteers on Sunday at the Divalia Nagar in Chaguanas. The buckets are to be sent to Jamaica to aid in disaster recovery after the island was devastated by Hurricane Melissa.

"We would have thought through the process end-to-end from the viewpoint of someone who wanted to donate. Although the disaster items here are valued at over $300,000, we would have paid less than what the supermarkets could even buy it at, since the distributors helped us alot.

"They understood the project and they gave us the best possible prices. So those citizens who donated can know they got the best value for their donated money."

Teelucksingh said the distributors would have also sold SEWA TT the newest food items with the longest expiry date. "This is better than donated food items, which most of the time has only a week or two left before they expire. We never want to donate food to a disaster area where by the time it reaches, the items would have expired."

He said the hope is that sometime this wee, the buckets will be shipped to Jamaica and it should arrive a week later. He is confident it would reach needy Jamaicans by the first week of December.

Hurricane Melissa made landfall at midday on the south-western coast of Jamaica on October 28, devastating the island, knocking out power to over 475,000 people, killing over 47 people – and damaging or destroying hundreds of houses, buildings, churches and roads.