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BY VANESSA C
ROLLE, Guardian Staff Reporter
The year 1995 changed the lives
of many youths in the Farm Road community with the emergence
of the Big Harvest Community Sunday School.
With a membership of some 300
children from within and out of the community, executors of
this religious program broke ground in 2003 for the
establishment of a Community Center through Woods Alley,
where they would impart spiritual values to children and at
risk youth.
The property where the
community center is being erected was leased to the Big
Harvest Sunday School by Bishop Cephas Ferguson for a period
of 99 years. On this property once stood the building where
he raised his own family.
It is envisioned that the
participating youth in the program would be trained to
complete the mission that its founders began.
There are some 75 active
students, and all teachers volunteer their time and talents
to make a positive impression on the lives of these young
people.
A host of special guests
attended the Sunday's School "Rally in the Alley" which was
held through Woods Alley under the theme: Reflecting On the
Past....Moving to the Future".
At the rally, persons were
honoured, (some posthumously) who instilled such values
throughout the community including Rev. Benjamin Nesbitt,
Samuel Adderley, Lionel Carey, Jack Dean, and William Harvey
Woods whom Woods Alley was named after.
Among invited guests was Prime
Minister Perry Christie who noted the importance of Sunday
School in framing the values of honesty and integrity in
Bahamian youth.
When the Prime Minister
arrived, there was a great cheer from the audience, and
performances by the Farm Road Marching Band and the Bahamas
Brass Band caused some members of the community to begin
dancing in the street.
Delivering the keynote address,
Prime Minister Christie said that all human beings are
subject to human frailties and they make mistakes.
However, beneficiaries of
Sunday School have a nobler sense of what is right and what
is wrong.
With regard to the honorees,
he said that is it good that Big Harvest Sunday School
recognized that national heroes are not limited to political
leaders or persons who are successful in various
professions.
"But there are simple people
who, through their own convictions and commitment to what is
right, demonstrated leadership and heroism at a time that
caused an entire community to live as one," Mr. Christie
said.
The persons recognized, he
said, played key roles in keeping civilization in The
Bahamas intact.
"The challenge to us today is
to recognize that there will come a time when these
youngsters will be someone in the audience, and they will
have no idea, none whatsoever of The Bahamas of the 20's and
the 30's and the 40's; and they will be cheated as a result
of that - cheated because we did not do a good job of
telling our stories. So we are obliged to congratulate and
to lend our support to Big Harvest Community, because what
they are trying to do reflects what every country has an
obligation to ensure," Mr. Christie said.
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Big Harvest
Community