The Children’s Chance (TCC) was established in 1988 as a 501(C) (3) Minnesota nonprofit corporation. The mission of TCC is to assist in the elimination of the school textbook and library book shortage in Jamaica.

In the United States, each year millions of useable textbooks and library books are being discarded. This fact is disheartening when third world countries such as Jamaica are without books. Can you imagine a school without books? Most schools in Jamaica own very few books. The subject matter being taught comes form the knowledge of the teacher. The blackboard is the main teaching aid. Where the books are available, they’re precious and very few, and are shared between large numbers of students who are thirsty for the vital knowledge so necessary for self development and advancement of the community and country. The Jamaican children are starved for books.

For the 21 years of operation, TCC has functioned primarily through volunteer efforts which included a board of directors. It soon became apparent that there was interest on the part of the general public who support the mission of TCC, especially in its efforts to save useable books from trash cans. Getting books donated to the TCC cause is not a problem - the schools and libraries in particular support TCC because they have great difficulty disposing of their used books, and they like to see the books given a second life. The challenge is raising the large amount of dollars necessary to ship the books.

Our minimum goal for 2010 is to raise $75,000 in funds to cover the budget which includes the shipment of 6 containers of books.

 The long-term financial goal is to raise $200,000 during the period of 2010-2012. If achieved, this would allow TCC to increase its shipment of books from 4 shipments per year to 8 shipments.

My wife, Marilyn, and I honeymooned in 1979 in Negril, Jamaica, which at the time was a small town on the western tip on Jamaica. It has since developed into a major tourist destination. One day, I struck up a conversation with a young boy and talked about his community, family, and school. He invited us to visit his school the next morning and we were given the opportunity to look around by the school's principal. We found the school to be crowded with students eager to learn and teachers teaching mainly from the blackboard. The lack of teaching materials surprised us and we decided to do something about it. I mailed down my 20 year collection of National Geographic magazines upon returning home. The response was very positive, so we started sending textbooks down by surface mail, one box at a time. We also started mailing boxes of pencils, color crayons, anything we thought they could use. We sent materials to the Negril All Age School for the next 5 years and had such an overwhelming response that we decided to add 5 more schools in western Jamaica. The book project was beginning to be too expensive for Marilyn and I to fund on our own, so we applied for and were granted a 501(C)3 tax exempt status in 1988 and The Children’s Chance (TCC) was founded. January of 1989 found us traveling through rural Jamaica, signing up 43 more schools and we shipped our first 40 foot cargo container(25,000 books) the following March.

Marilyn and I started our dream 20 years ago with the one small school and now TCC is working with hundreds of thousands of school children and all of the libraries in the Jamaica Library Service, reaching hundreds of thousands of Jamaicans of all ages. It has been one heck of a ride and more fun and rewarding than we ever imagined possible.

Peter Gresser