Boxing Day lunch restores hope after Hurricane Melissa

Rotary members pack supplies during the Boxing Day Senior Lunch.

By Nerissa Persaud, past president, Rotary Club of Montego Bay, Jamaica

The day began quietly — but with a purpose. At 7 a.m. 26 December, I was on my way to First Baptist Church Grand Cayman. Not for a service, but to be part of an annual Rotary tradition, built on six decades of unwavering service, love, and human connection.

This year marked the 60th anniversary of the Rotary Club of Grand Cayman’s Boxing Day Seniors Lunch — an act of service so rooted in consistency and care that it has quietly become part of the island’s heartbeat.

Two months prior, my family and I were uprooted from our home of almost four years in Montego Bay, Jamaica, when Hurricane Melissa struck with 185 mph winds. Montego Bay had been a happy place, where I discovered belonging and connection to my community through Rotary service.  

Leaving what was left of our home, relocating schools, rebuilding business, and landing in the Cayman Islands meant far more than logistics. There was grief. A quiet, unspoken grief for the Rotary community I had poured myself into, for the people and the causes that had become part of my identity. Service was not something I did — it was something I was.

And then came the Boxing Day Senior Lunch. Putting on a simple white polo shirt, golden Rotary wheel stitched over my heart, never felt better. It was not nostalgia. It was readiness. Readiness in action. A reminder that service does not belong to a place; it belongs to a calling.

A Rotary volunteer handles a box of supplies for the Boxing Day event.

Walking through the church doors, I saw Rotarians, children, young and old, mothers and fathers, entire generations moving together in quiet efficiency. Tables were prepared, boxes unpacked, hamper bags assembled — over 900 of them — each with a tangible expression of dignity, nourishment, and respect. The Boxing Day lunches were prepared not as charity, but as an act of community.

Rotary does more than serve meals to seniors or bring clean water to children. Rotary connects and creates belonging, reminding us that we matter. Our smallest actions, when done together, ripple outwards in ways we never fully see.

As I stood there, surrounded by people who give as much as they teach, who support through both actions and caring, I felt something revive inside me. A quiet certainty. Rotary had not left me. Community had not left me. Purpose had not left me.

This Christmas, I was deeply grateful that my family was safe under one roof. But I am also acutely aware that much of that resilience — much of who I am — has been shaped and sustained by the Rotarians in my life who have become family.

The Boxing Day Seniors Lunch of the Rotary Club of Grand Cayman was a testimony that when we come together, good things happen. And when we serve together, we heal together. Never stop believing in the power of Rotary.

Nerissa Persaud is the 2025-26 membership engagement chair in Rotary District 7020.