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From time to time groups and individuals come to us with a desire to improve their income levels. Developing their strengths and interests, we have been able to help two of these groups and have started a third group.

Farmers’ Cooperative
Bringing farmers together to enable them to find markets for their produce and to bargain for better prices is the goal of the Farmers’ Cooperative. Working with the University of Michigan, the Farmers’ Cooperative is now a registered Jamaican cooperative and taking full advantage of the benefits of that status including government sponsored training. Engineering students from the University of Michigan are now helping the farmers develop new markets with the use of solar vegetable and fruit dryers.

Eco-Weave Bags
Eight women of Penlyne Castle, St Thomas came together in early 2009 with the assistance of the Blue Mountain Project to form the Blue Mountain Diamond Women’s Group. They taught each other to crochet and have been hard at work ever since making Eco-bags. A similar group is forming in Hagley Gap.

Eco-bags are made from the plastic bags that litter our countryside. The Blue Mountain Diamond Women’s Group collect used plastic bags, clean them, cut them into strips, and crotchet them into bags of their own design.
A recent grant from the Grace Kennedy Foundation will allow the Woman's Group to explore sales opportunities in Jamaican tourist resort areas in Montego Bay and Ocho Rios as well as in Kingston.
Profits from the sale of the Eco-bags help the women send their children to school, make nutritious meals for their families, and pay for needed health care.

Bed and Breakfast
The Blue Mountain Peak is a tourist draw but the people of the Gap have not reaped the benefits of this opportunity. Most tour groups come from into the Gap, climb the peak and do not leave any money in the Gap. A group wishes to change this.

Many in this group have worked with the Blue Mountain Project for several years acting as host families and learning how to please and manage the needs of our Service Learning Volunteers. Bringing together this group with one of our volunteer groups who have expressed an interest in working on this project, we hope to see an increase in income for Hagley Gap residents in the near future.

Please continue learning about our other programs:

Clean Water
Health
Literacy