It’s not the 2024 Paris Olympics, but there will be three days of intense international competition at the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Relays starting Thursday at Franklin Field that includes the anticipated participation of high schoolers from Jamaica, who have benefited for decades from the not-for-profit Team Jamaica Bickle (TJB) organization.
This year, the comprehensive New York- and Philadelphia-based hospitality initiative is celebrating its 30th year of providing essential assistance to the participating athletes from Jamaica and other Caribbean nations and territories.
New York Knicks star Jalen Brunson and his mother Sandra Brunson — cofounders of the youth focused Second Round Foundation charity — have joined the list of sponsors supporting the TJB efforts. The Second Round Foundation will join TJB sponsors Resorts World Casino, Caribbean Food Delights, Grace Foods, New York Life insurance company, JA Bank, Sun Coast Beach Club, Tower Isles foods, Digicel, the Jamaica Tourist Board, and the On sporting apparel firm.
Through its sponsors, TJB provides Caribbean food, physical and chiropractic therapy, and other services to ease any stresses of the visiting athletes may endure on their visit to the United States.
Buoyed by the now-significant Caribbean attendance at the annual meet, TJB has encouraged and gained the support of Jamaica-based corporations at the Penn Relays — such as Grace Foods, which now sponsors the high school 4X400 “Championship of America” races for boys and girls, as well as other premier Relays’ events.
TJB also lobbied for and backed the meet organizers’ 2012 decision to fly Jamaica’s national flag during the annual event “in recognition of Jamaica’s 50 anniversary of independence, and the contribution made to the relay festival for nearly five decades by Jamaican athletes,” reported the Jamaica Information Service.
Inspired by the Jamaican flag’s joining the array of flags adorning the stadium, supporters of St. Vincent and Grenadines got permission to fly their national flag in a Franklin Field display in 2019.
For information and Penn Relays tickets, visit bit.ly/PennRelaysTickets2024. To learn more about Team Jamaica Bickle and donate, visit teamjamaicabickle.org.
CARIB FILM FEST
“Who in Da Morning,” a documentary on the Bahamas’ Junkanoo festival, “Fortune for All,” a story of a Trinidad and Tobago family reuniting after the death of a sibling, and “The First Rasta,” about Leonard Percival Howell’s establishment of a Jamaican Rasta community in the 1950’s are some of the offerings at the African Diaspora International Film Festival’s Caribbean Film Series, running Friday to Sunday Columbia University’s Teachers College in Manhattan.
The festival features 12 films from across the Caribbean and its diasporas: Cuba, Puerto Rico, Suriname, Martinique, the UK, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and the Bahamas, according to the festival website. Teachers College is at 525 W. 120th St. (between Broadway and Amsterdam Ave.) For a full schedule, film descriptions, tickets, and other information, visit NYADIFF.org.
JAMAICA COLLEGE BENEFIT
With the goals of replacing aging infrastructure with environment-friendly facilities and maintaining a “sustainable academic environment” with endowed faculty posts, the Northern Caribbean University International Development Foundation will hold the university’s fundraising “Impact Gala” on April 28 on the campus of the Washington Adventist University in Takoma Park, Maryland.
Pastor Paul Douglas — treasurer and chief financial officer of the Seventh-day Adventist World Church and a Northern Caribbean University (NCU) alumnus — will be the guest speaker. Maryland’s Washington Adventist University, which has educational partnerships with NCU in Mandeville, Jamaica, will host the gala and livestream the affair.
A Seventh-day Adventist institution, NCU is owned by the Jamaica Union Conference and the Atlantic Caribbean Union Mission of Seventh-day Adventists, and is accredited by the Adventist Accrediting Association in Washington, D.C. To attend the gala, donate or get more information, visit ncuadvance.org.
