School furniture donated to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. school.
PHILIPSBURG--The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. school recently received a shipment.
The Miss IQ Foundation in the Netherlands has donated a 40ft container of furniture to the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School in Dutch Quarter.
The school’s students are still scattered around different locations for classes as the repair works to the school are not yet completed.
The Miss IQ foundation is a non-profit organisation in the Netherlands that assists schools, government institutions and other non-governmental organisations in the Dutch Caribbean with furniture and educational materials donated by schools and large corporations in the Netherlands. In the past after the 2017 hurricanes, the Miss IQ Foundation shipped five containers with materials to schools and non profit organisations NGOs in St. Maarten.
During the visit, the foundation representatives discussed the proposal of a collaboration whereby the Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport ECYS and school boards could work together to assist schools in receiving furniture and other educational materials donated to the Miss IQ Foundation. The Foundation would be responsible for seeking donations of the furniture and other educational materials in the Netherlands, and arranging shipment of the furniture in containers and the receiving entity would cover the transportation and shipping cost incurred to ship the container to the Dutch Caribbean.
The proposal entails that the schools would prepare a “wish list” of furniture and other educational materials required, share the list with the Miss IQ Foundation, who in turn would then approach schools, and the business sector in the Netherlands to assist by donating the requested items.
Once the foundation receives positive responses to these requests from donors, Miss IQ Foundation calculates the cost as to the cost to ship these items in a container to the countries of destination which allows the arrangements of payment for the shipping cost.
In the case of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School, the ECYS Ministry covered the transportation and shipping cost.
“As the Minister of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport, I made the decision to select the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. school as a pilot project for this initiative, as this school, presently under repairs due to damaged sustained during the hurricane in 2017. This school has lost furniture and educational materials over the years resulting from the heavy rain through the damaged roofs,” it was stated in a press release on Monday.
The container was shipped in early November 2023 and was scheduled to arrive on December 26, 2023, however, due to miscommunication on the part of the shipping company in the Netherlands, the container was shipped to Djakarta and remained there for two additional weeks. Then it was again reloaded to be shipped to St. Maarten and arrived here during the first week of January 2024.
During a courtesy visit with the Miss IQ representative last year, it was also decided that Milton Peters College (MPC) and Sundial schools would both receive four 40ft containers with school furniture. Representatives of the foundation met with MPC’s management team, who accepted the proposal from Miss IQ representatives and reacted immediately by submitting a “wish-list” to the Ministry with requested furniture, as well as other educational materials.
Once the containers are ready, they will be shipped to St. Maarten early next month to arrive here by the end of March 2024.
This collaborative effort between the ECYS Ministry and the Miss IQ Foundation was said to be one that will significantly benefit students, teachers, and the entire educational system.
ECYS Minister Rodolphe Samuel thanked the Foundation for the donation.
