CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correct a photo that identified Abe Epp as Dave Hunter.
Another shipment of books for school children is set to make its way to Jamaica via Niagara-on-the-Lake, with more than enough reading material to satisfy the young, curious learners who’ll have access to them.
This delivery of literature, which NOTL residents Betty Knight and Dave Hunter collect every year from libraries across Niagara, is heading south to help expand the minds of youngsters in the Caribbean nation.
The volunteers have sent 3,200 books to Jamaica this summer — in just the past four years, those involved in the project have delivered more than 8,600 books to the island.
Knight and Hunter picked up the annual project’s torch four years ago from long-time fruit farmer Abe Epp, who began it 20 years ago after one of his former seasonal employees from Jamaica took him on a tour of his home nation.
“He lived up in the mountains, so they took us up in the mountains,” Epp, now 95, said in an interview outside his home at Lakeshore Road and Line 2.
“And what are you gonna show the boss up in the mountains except the local school?”
Epps clearly remembers visiting every classroom and speaking to students and teachers.
“The teacher said we can teach them to read and write but we don’t have any books,” he said.
“I said, ‘I don’t promise but we will see what we can do.’ ”
The result has been an effort to send thousands of books to Jamaica since the campaign began in the early 2000s.
Epp, long retired and still living in the farmhouse he bought in 1950, remains tied to the project in spirit, but leaves the heavy lifting to Knight and Hunter, who use a packing barn on Epp’s property as a jumping point to send the books.
The shipping to Jamaica and the delivery of books to schools is done via Food for the Poor, an international nonprofit charity based out of Florida with chapters in countries around the world including Canada.
Knight and Hunter have been working with Food for the Poor Canada for three years now.
Previously, they worked with the local rotary club on this project. Following that, a private representative in Jamaica received the books and distributed them to the schools.
That process costs a lot of money, said Knight.
“One year I paid for it, one year NOTL Rotary Club paid for it. Abe paid for it for a number of years,” she said.
Now, with no costs for shipping and a large organization taking care of logistics such as customs and tariffs, the program is running smoother than it ever has, said Knight.
“You figure stuff out as you go along,” she said.
She is even able to watch over the shipment while it’s in transit, she added.
“We get a tracking number and we can actually see the ship as it works its way down the coast of the United States to Jamaica.”
Once the books arrive, Food for the Poor Jamaica takes over and decides what schools the books are delivered to.
Last year, for example, Half Way Tree Primary School in Kingston was one of six schools to receive some of the more than 3,300 books volunteers in NOTL collected.
This process works just fine with Knight, who believes having Jamaicans deliver the books to other Jamaicans is the way it should be.
“My position is it is not the old white woman in Canada to tell them where the books are needed,” she said.
Every year, Food for the Poor Jamaica sends photos of the children with the books back to Canada so Knight, Hunter and Epp can see the fruits of their labour.
“The kids are just so joyous when they get these books,” she said. “Now the kids have a choice and an opportunity to learn.”