Next stop was a 4-hour drive the following day from Kingston to Montego Bay and to the St. James Parish Council Care Centre in downtown Montego Bay run by the Open Heart Charitable Mission. The Care Centre provides food, washing facilities, medical assistance and clothing to the region’s homeless. Thanks to the wonders of social media we found out about the Open Heart Mission and made contact with one of the founders Robert Clare and were digging what they do – they provide all of the above at the Care Centre, they have a refuge housing a number of homeless people and they also have a farm that serves as a means of involving those that they work with in the business of farming, in creating a sustainable resource:

The Farm offers training, self-esteem and camaraderie in exchange for work on the farm to all who are ready to take the next step off the street and contribute back to sustain the services of Open Heart Mission.  

Two plots of land up in the mountains provide the mission fresh food to supplement food donations.  Crops are tended, chickens and pigs are raised and lives are transformed out in the open air.