This is a joint partnership between Kamila McDonald of Kamila's Kitchen and Stacey Baugh who are working together to impact the hard hit communities in St. Ann.
On October 28, 2025 Jamaica was hit by a powerful Category 5 hurricane leaving large areas of the island devastated.
St. Ann was one of the parishes significantly affected by this hurricane with communities in Ocho Rios, St. Ann's Bay, Brown's Town, Moneague, Claremont, and Cave Valley bearing the brunt of the impact.
Cave Valley in particular, a low lying rural community was hit very hard because of repeated flooding from the nearby river even before the hurricane made landfall.
Many homes are still under water wth families displaced and personal belongings, livestock, and crops destroyed.
The immediate needs for food, shelter, hygiene items cannot be overstated.
We (Kamila & Stacey) are cousins who are working together to assist these communities and families. Kamila has 3 restaurants on the island. Kamila's Kitchen's Drax Hall Location will serve 300 meals on Sundays to residents in the hard hit communities surrounding the restaurant. Care packages that include donated items and other essentials will be delivered on Sundays with the meals. Stacey is a psychology professor living and working in the Washington DC/Maryland area. She coordinates Christmas toy programs in the US and Jamaica each year.
In mid December, the care packages delivered will also include toys for the children of the community to attempt to bring moments of levity to children in unimaginable circumstances.
Funds collected will be used to facilitate the weekly meal delivery, purchase essential items for individual families, and provide care packages.
As we get more familiar with the families in the communities the specific needs of individual families will be more clearly identified. This will allow us to provide exactly what a particular family made need at that moment.
The immediate goal of this project is to provide necessary supplies and meals and a source of hope. The longer term goal is to help these communities rebuild both physically and psychologically.
Learn more about the full scope of the project here:
Organizer
