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Published:Sunday | March 21, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Jeffrey Hall (right), managing director of Jamaica Producers Group (JP), gives Olympic and World champion sprinters Shelly-Ann Fraser (left) and Asafa Powell (second left) a bunch of ripe bananas, his company's main produce, while Professor Rosalea Hamilton (second right), vice-president of the University of Technology; Charles Johnston (third right), chairman of JP; and Rolf Simmonds, commercial director of JP, Tropical Foods, look on at the launch of Jamaica's first fresh-produce campaign at UTech, St Andrew, recently. - Rudolph Brown/Photographer

UTech collaborates with Jamaica Producers to augment scholarship fund


UTech has partnered with Jamaica Producers (JP) Tropical Foods in a fresh-food campaign dubbed, 'Peel the Benefits', aimed at increasing the consumption of ripe bananas while contributing to the UTech Scholarship Fund. This will be enabled through JP's donation of a portion of retail sales of ripe bananas sold in supermarkets in Kingston and St Andrew. At the launch of the campaign, held on March 10, on UTech's Papine campus, JP's Commercial Director, Rolf Simmonds, said, "JP Tropical Foods is hoping to raise more than $1.5m for the UTech Scholarship Fund through this campaign." UTech/MVP Track and Field Club athletes Asafa Powell and Shelly-Ann Fraser have endorsed the campaign, and have graciously committed to the use of their images and time in support of the fund-raising effort that will benefit UTech students.

At the launch ceremony, JP Chairman, Charles Johnston presented a cheque for just under $130,000 to Prof Rosalea Hamilton, VP, Development, UTech, which represented the first monthly instalment raised from sales in February. Dr Hamilton, in thanking JP for collaborating with UTech, disclosed that "each year UTech receives more than 1,500 scholarship applications and we are only able to process, on average, about 22 per cent of these. It means, therefore, that there is a need for some additional $166 million to meet the annual demand". The Peel the Benefits campaign will be run for a period of one year.


UTech partners with Hydel University College

On March 8, president of UTech, Errol Morrison, and founder of the Hydel Group of Schools, Hyacinth Bennett, signed a memorandum of understanding to corporate in various ways for the mutual benefit of students at UTech and the newly established Hydel University College. Under the agreement, both universities will share joint information on programme development and delivery in such areas as articulation of accredited programmes, joint degree programmes, research projects and technology initiatives, income-generating projects, electives and continuing education programmes among other initiatives.