GrassROOTS Community Foundation to redevelop St James Parish Library

WESTERN BUREAU:

The New Jersey-based GrassROOTS Community Foundation will be undertaking redevelopment work at the St James Parish Library, including rebuilding of the facility’s reference area, beginning on November 2.

The initiative is part of the efforts to make the library more attractive.

Speaking to The Gleaner on Wednesday, GrassROOTS President Dr Janice Johnson Dias said that the anticipated work will follow up on her organisation’s previous construction of a podcast room at the library in July 2025.

“We strongly believe that if we increase literacy access, meaning access to books, it will have a positive impact on youth crime. This is what brought us to St James, and we see the library as a central hub for that, in terms of making this space attractive for young people to come, having books that are new and beautiful, and having resources that increase not only traditional literacy but digital literacy,” she said.

“ ... We are going to rebuild the reference area so that whole wing will be new,” continued Johnson Dias. “We have a misconception that because we have become a digital world, we do not need physical spaces anymore. But more and more we are finding that people who share physical spaces are healthier people, and we want to invest in that.”

The St James Parish Library is one of three parish libraries that the GrassROOTS Foundation has earmarked for redevelopment work. It is also to target the parish libraries in St Ann and St Catherine after the work at St James library wraps up in 2030.

The three libraries were chosen based on the foundation’s examination of areas in Jamaica with high levels of youth crime and corresponding low literacy levels.

Johnson Dias noted that libraries continue to be relevant as social gathering spaces and educational hubs for citizens.

“When we did an inventory of the three places where we want to develop the local libraries, we saw that the library still serves as a place where working parents drop off their children, where people learn to read, where people are coming to print things, and where people have to get things done in order for their works to be carried out. The utilisation of the library remains high,” she said.

Meanwhile, Marvetta Stewart-Richards, the regional director for the Jamaica Library Service’s Region Four, told The Gleaner that the GrassROOTS Foundation’s work is greatly appreciated in light of the damage Hurricane Melissa did to several libraries across St James, resulting in the closure of four branch libraries.

“The refurbishing of the space itself [at the St James Parish Library] will attract more people to come into the space. The podcast room will bring its own set of persons wanting to use that space to record their stories, or to rent the space to do their own podcast programmes,” said Stewart-Richards. “We are looking at how we are intertwining technology with what we already have, and I am sure it will impact the greater community.”

christopher.thomas@gleanerjm.com