Basseterre, St. Kitts, March 10, 2023 (ZIZ Newsroom) –“Operation Give Back” was in full swing on Thursday morning as ZIZ News captured the Owner of Produce Delight Farm, Otis Jeffers making a donation of pumpkins to various institutions around the island.
The first stop was the JNF General Hospital where Mr. Jeffers explained the rationale behind his “Operation Give Back” initiative.
“It is a good thing to be a blessing to others and to give back to society and today I’ll be donating a few pumpkins to all the hospitals around the island, the Cardin Home, the St. Christopher Children’s Home, the New Horizon Rehabilitation Center, his Majesty’s Prison, and other establishments around the island.”
He explained that this donation is also a means of promoting the “eat local” concept.
“So, as part of my operation give back, I chose to donate Pumpkin. But why pumpkin? Pumpkin is a crop that can be grown all year round, it’s very easy to manage, and when we grow pumpkin, we harvest pumpkin in abundance, also we trying to promote the eat local concept and we want our locals to grasp the meaning of eating local to understand the nutritional benefits of these wonderful lush ripe pumpkins that we have here.”
Director of Health Institutions at JNF General Hospital, Dr. Jenson Morton thanked Mr. Jeffers for his donation and spoke of the benefits of consuming pumpkin.
“I would like to say thank you to Mr. Jeffers for the much-appreciated donation. At the hospital, we try our hardest to promote healthy eating when anyone is here as a patient and pumpkins are a very good food. We know they’re rich in vitamin A, they’re rich in antioxidants, and they can help to boost an immune system,” explained Dr. Morton.
“So, it’s a wonderful food to include into the diets of patients and of all people. We are really happy, that locally pumpkins of such high quality are being produced and we will definitely continue to source produce like this locally. And we are very much appreciative again of Mr. Jeffers and his very much appreciated contribution.”
The next stop was the Cardin Home where Coordinator of Activities, Micheline Phillip received the donation on behalf of the residents there.
The donation drive also visited the School Meals Center where, Top Chef, Fitzroy Meredith spoke of how he will be using the pumpkin that was donated.
“So happy that Mr. Jeffers could think about bringing back some of his product here because we do use a lot of pumpkin to make chicken pumpkin soup for the students out there. We’re trying to utilize a lot of farm products for this term. So right now, we can do pumpkin fitters, pumpkin drinks, and everything like that. So we’re trying to cut out the sugar sweet and make good use of the farm products.”
Other locations that received a donation include the St. Christopher Children’s Home, The New Horizon Rehabilitation Center, and the Ministry of Social Development and Gender Affairs.