A new centre to assist students living in Constant Spring and Cassava Piece, St Andrew, has been opened at the Constant Spring Seventh-day Adventist Church.

The Oasis Learning and Resource Centre, equipped with computers and other learning aids, will provide after-school and homework assistance to students preparing for the Grade Six Achievement Test and Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate examinations this year.

In commending the effort of the Adventist church, Dr Herbert Thompson, guest speaker and president of Northern Caribbean University (NCU), challenged Jamaicans to give to society in order to make it a better one.

"Part of our challenge in this country is that we think we must be paid for everything," said Thompson. "The love of money has become such a root of evil that everything is for sale and that is a part of what is destroying us. At NCU, we have a requirement called service learning. This requires that, whatever subject area you are pursuing, before you can get a final grade for that subject, you have to join forces with other students to go out into the community, to do something for which you are not paid. Some students ask 'what does a grade in chemistry have to do with service learning?' Our answer is that you are not a fully educated person, until you have learnt about the dependence between yourself and the other people in the community."

The centre is the 12th of its kind to open in East Jamaica Conference, and forms part of a thrust by the conference to open a home work centre in every community, in which a church operates. "This is one of the ways in which we are going to transform our community," said Pastor Adrian Cotterell, president of the Adventist Church in east Jamaica.