St Thomas residents to renovate Easington Park
RESIDENTS of Easington, St Thomas, will participate in a clean-up and beautification exercise of Easington Park during youth and community month, which will be observed in November.
The clean-up will be spearheaded by the Social Development Commission (SDC) and members of the Yallahs Development Area Committee.
Latoya Mullings, community development officer at the SDC in St Thomas, told JIS News that the decision to renovate the park had come from the residents.
“Based on their level of volunteerism, their willingness to have the park renovated, we thought that the venture should be selected as a community month project, especially for the benefit of the children of Easington,” she said.
Mullings said that residents have begun to seek sponsorship for the project.
“They’ve gotten materials from persons in the community and they’re really participating fully to get the park renovated,” she added.
Easington, once the capital of St David, a former parish in the east of the island, merged with the parishes of Port Royal and St Thomas in the East to form present-day St Thomas, and therefore holds special historical significance.
Mullings noted that Easington Park became prominent after Paul Bogle rested there in August 1856, during his legendary ‘journey’ to Spanish Town, from Stony Gut. A monument was erected at the park to commemorate this fact.
Bogle became a National Hero based on his political activism on behalf of the people of St Thomas against an unjust British system of governance.