JPS powers up relocation of Annie Dawson Children’s Home

For Timara Jackson, the two-year relationship she’s shared with the girls who reside at the Annie Dawson Children’s Home, awakened her inner advocate.

“I am quite an introverted person, but working with the home, I realised they need people to be a voice for them,” reasoned Jackson, a plant engineer in the Operations Department of the JPS Rockfort and Hunts Bay power stations.

“They need the community and country to give a helping hand. Since my involvement with the home, I have found myself reaching out not only to JPS, but also to friends and friends of friends to give whatever assistance they can provide.”

Her ties with the children’s home – founded 12 years ago by social development professional retiree Ivaline Nickie – was initiated in April 2023. The engineering operations team had been looking to further their community engagement.

“We wanted to give back as a collective, and also as individuals. I was asking around, and was told of a children’s home in Havendale,” Jackson recounted. “I called Ms Nickie one evening after work enquiring what assistance they needed, and how JPS could assist in making things a little easier for them.”

The two women would meet the next day, and quickly developed a mutual admiration.

It was the beginning of an enriching collaboration that has time and again renewed Timara’s faith in the beauty of human connections.

“My ongoing interactions with the girls these past two years have taught me so much because their perspective on life is so different,” revealed Jackson, a Caribbean Maritime University engineering graduate who joined the power company in 2018 upon completing a yearlong internship. She has cultivated goodwill rituals, her coworkers included, where purchasing regular personal care products for the girls, occasional dinner surprises to give housemothers and caregivers a day-off in preparing meals, and random ice-cream treats, have become familiar loving acts of service. There are even hair days she dedicates on her schedule to the girls.

“I will help the older girls wash their hair, braid or cream it. I do it because when they go to school with their hair nice and neat, they feel a sense of confidence. Also, because there are so many girls, and so much hair to comb, it gives the house mothers a break so they can then focus on the other girls who are disabled and cannot help themselves,” she explained. “It brings me a sense of joy to help somebody feel better about themselves for a day or a week.”

She posited that such acts of service have deepened her humanity.

LESSONS

“As people, we sometimes get caught up in everyday things that are seemingly insignificant. Becoming involved with the girls of Annie Dawson has reminded me to appreciate the little things and appreciate community,” shared Timara, whose farmer father Shawn so anointed her, combining the first names of Hollywood actress siblings Tia and Tamera Mowry, both of whom he adored.

For Jackson, who turned 30 in April, there is an inherent promise that she can readily identify among the girls who are her extended family.

“They are tomorrow’s lawyers, doctors, engineers and teachers. Allowing them the opportunity to achieve is so good,” she reflected.

The children home’s founder and executive director, Nickie, is thankful for Jackson’s consistent presence in the lives of the girls and the staff.

“She’s Auntie Timara for everybody, even the caregivers call her that. The children are always delighted to see her, and make much of her whenever she visits,” Nickie raved.

The 72-year-old St Vincentian, who came to Jamaica in 1975 to be trained as a minister of religion, had always harboured a dream of someday establishing a children’s home of her own.

“This is simply because my parents Annie and Dawson Nickie always had other people’s children in the home who needed care and protection. They looked after them in the same way they did for my seven siblings and I, who was the youngest,” she explained of the long-fermented idea. The doors of her child welfare institution opened in June 2013 and was named in honour of her mother and father.

“I think I had the best parents in the world. My father didn’t have much academically, but he was thrifty and a great entrepreneur, so he always provided well for his family with the land and working as a chef. My mother worked with the community, senior citizens, made clothing for children who were in need and taught people who were not literate,” she recalled of her upbringing on the Lesser Antilles island.

Securing her theology degree, Nickie went on to pursue a bachelor’s and Master’s in social administration at The University of the West Indies, and worked extensively in social development across a number of agencies in Jamaica and the region, for a four-decade span.

“When I was actually coming to the end of my work life, I started making the preparations before I came off working with the Ministry of Health at the time because I heard an appeal from the government for help [with children’s homes] so I said it seems I can still do something I wanted to do,” she informed.

DREAM PROJECT NOW A REALITY

Nickie secured space in the residential community of Havendale, St Andrew and welcomed 32 girls, aged from infancy to adolescence, to the dream project now a full-fledged reality.

What she’s proudest of in guiding the home’s decade-plus operation is “seeing my children succeeding. They have become head girls of their schools, and ‘Girl of the year’. I love when they come home as a class champion of the month, or when they do their CXCs, get 7 passes with Grade Ones and Twos and go on to college”.

However, after 12 years at Havendale, the expiration of a lease agreement demanded a relocation to a new address at Sunrise Crescent off Red Hills Road this year.

At this juncture, Jackson and JPS stepped up to the plate.

“Timara said the company could help with moving and provided the trucks and the manpower,” Nickie informed of the massive relocation undertaking of the current 23 girls and young women at Annie Dawson, and six full-time staff members.

“We were very grateful of the offer being extended. The need was so overwhelming to get out of where we were and get the new place fixed up.”

Jackson’s boss Damion Whyte, director of the Rockfort & Hunts Bay Power Station gave an update on the physical moving and rewiring work inside the new premises, valued at $800,000, but underwritten by JPS.

“The electrical work took about three weeks to complete. What made it even more special was that one of our contractor partners, Richard Dunkley & Associates, came onboard, as well. After doing the site visit, they told us they simply couldn’t charge JPS for the labour; it was their way of giving back too. That kind of partnership really meant a lot. We had about seven of our staff members assisting with the relocation initiative, moving the furniture and appliances from the old home to the new one.”

Whyte said the biggest challenge was the age of the building.

“Older homes can be tricky because you want to modernise the systems, but you also have to be careful in how you approach it. But, with the combined effort of our team and Richard Dunkley and Associates, everything was completed safely and to a high standard.”

Much like his junior colleague Jackson, the JPS director has been charmed by Nickie and the young women in her care.

“Meeting the girls has been very touching. They’re full of energy, potential and hope, despite the challenges they’ve faced. Talking with them really brings home why we do this. It’s not about fixing up a building, it’s about creating an environment where they feel valued and supported.”