Amy Bailey

"Amy Bailey gave voluntary service to numerous underprivileged girls in the field of education and social service training. With £100 she made a down payment for the property at 4 Rosedale Avenue in Kingston to start the Housecraft Training Centre. The Centre opened in January 1946 with a mission to train girls to bring out the best in themselves, to teach them respect for the self and the job. In essence her mission was to equip them with self sufficiency and self reliance. Here she mothered 6000 girls along with her adopted daughter. Amy was co-founder and first Chairman of the Women's Liberal Club which fought to give women an acceptable place in the world both outside and inside the home. She fought relentlessly for the liberation of women and fervently believed that women should qualify themselves in order to achieve their aspirations and not be rewarded with inferior positions because of their sex. She along with Mae Farquharson, while in England raising funds for the Save-the-Children Fund, was advised that the real problem facing Jamaican women relates to the high birth rate. Having realized this, she quickly responded to the problem by teaching birth control on a small scale. Amy along with Dr. Hyacinth Lightbourne and others in 1938 organized the first birth control league. Amy Bailey is a strong Jamaican, inspired by Marcus Garvey, who believed in the dignity of people and the fight against racial discrimination and the marginalization of women.In 1938, she lectured at a Glasgow Peace Conference, Interlaken, Switzerland." http://www.nlj.gov.jm/bios-a-h#bailey