Community focus | Volunteer honours memory of friend, Kagra, through charity
September 17, 2020-
- A donation made by The Kagra Foundation to Florida Medical’s Behavioral Health Department
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- Derry-Ann Morgan-Allen strikes a pose beside items that were about to be sent to the Bahamas after a recent hurricane
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- Derry-Ann’s husband, Michael, taking toys to May Pen Hospital in Jamaica. Her son, Sheldon, is in the background
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- The house that the foundation helped to build at Cart Pass in Jamaica
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- Left to right: Derry-Ann Morgan-Allen, her daughter and Ambassador for the foundation – Sage, and Vice President of the organization – Petula Clarke
Eighteen years ago, Derry-Ann Morgan-Allen created a vehicle for goodwill.
She founded The KaGra Foundation, and named it in honour of her late friend Kameha Grant, who also was known as Kagra.
The organization, registered in the United States on 2 April 2018, has touched numerous lives in Jamaica, the United States, Haiti, Dominican Republic and the Bahamas.
“I can’t live without the feeling of knowing that I am helping someone who genuinely needs help,” said Morgan-Allen, a Jamaican native living in the United States.
Her foundation’s work would not have been possible without sterling contribution from other like-minded people and organizations around the world.
“We are just a bunch of selfless people who put ourselves out there for people – some of them we have never met; some of them we will never meet,” added Morgan-Allen.
The KaGra Foundation now has a total membership of about 400 people, who are located in Jamaica and the United States.
Its outreach programmes include mentorship, food, housing, clothing, healthcare, education, toys, and development for job placement.
In Jamaica, for example, the foundation provides dinner at Christmas for several homeless people as part of its ‘Love Is A Verb’ initiative. It also distributes Christmas meals, along with snacks and school supplies, to children. Furthermore, the organization, so far, helped to built one house at Cart Pass in St. Catherine and provided logistical support for the construction of another house elsewhere in the parish.
Morgan-Allen told The Beacon that The KaGra Foundation is strategic with the help is gives.
“Our role as an organization is not just to give a person a home or some food,” she explained. “We want to give people the tool they need to ensure that the next generation will do better than the generation before.”
Needless to say, funding is paramount in the operation of any organization – including KaGra.
“I am very shameless when it comes to begging,” Morgan-Allen said. “I cannot beg for me to save my life, but I can beg for somebody who is in need. I am shameless about that.”
The philanthropist extraordinaire, in the meantime, envisions the foundation continuing to grow from strength to strength.
“The sky is the limit,” she said. “I see us getting to the point where we can change the trajectory for an entire family for generations to come.”
To learn more about The KaGra Foundation, CLICK HERE.
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