A love of cookies and Christmas led to an annual tradition of giving.

During the first stage of COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020, then 14-year-old Maria Greenland, now a sixth-former at Campion College, began to explore different types of baking – banana bread, regular bread, cookies, brownies, cakes, pizza!

She also discovered the concept of a cookie mix in a jar online and as the holiday season approached, developed the idea to create these fun gift jars with a twist. @jarfulja was born! Maria set up an Instagram page to promote and take orders and after learning about the Child Protection and family Services Agency (CPFSA’s) Holiday Wishlist programme, decided to support that effort with whatever profit was made.

“My mother has always encouraged my older brother and me to do whatever we can to help others and so for most years, whenever we have had birthday parties, we have asked for cash donations in lieu of birthday presents and we use that to support school fees for students at inner city schools,” Maria explained.

“During the lockdowns, when we spent time as a family baking, it seemed to be a natural next step to use whatever money we raised to help fulfil some of the wishes of children in State care.”

Maria has facilitated the donation of close to J$175,000 worth of presents to the CPFSA. As the Wishlist project is not available this year, Maria decided to support another project she is working on called “Come Mek wi Dance”, which supports the art of dance by collecting and redistributing gently used dance gear and spreading awareness of the practice of dance therapy. She was happy to donate J$75,000 to the Tivoli Dance Troupe to support their outreach efforts, such as a performance for the seniors at the Golden Age Home.

A dancer since the age of 3, Maria shared: “Dance has always been a big part of my life, it challenges and relaxes me. Annual holiday dance performances are part of our holiday traditions and now so is jarfulja. I finish my last performance, we put up our decorations and our tree and we start making our jarful ja cookie jars.“

To learn more you can follow @jarfulja and @comemekwidance on Instagram.