KINGSTON, Ja­maica – In a pow­er­ful dis­play of sol­i­dar­i­ty, Olympic 100m cham­pi­on Noah Lyles and Ja­maican sprint leg­end Asafa Pow­ell have joined forces to de­liv­er crit­i­cal aid to com­mu­ni­ties in Ja­maica rav­aged by Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa.

The dev­as­tat­ing Cat­e­go­ry 5 storm made land­fall last Tues­day, leav­ing a trail of de­struc­tion across St. Eliz­a­beth and neigh­bour­ing parish­es.

The re­lief ini­tia­tive, cen­tred in Georges Val­ley, St. Eliz­a­beth, the home­town of Lyles’ fi­ancée, Junelle Brom­field, saw the duo and a team of vol­un­teers help to dis­trib­ute es­sen­tial sup­plies like gro­ceries and toi­letries to res­i­dents whose lives have been up­end­ed.

The per­son­al con­nec­tion to the cri­sis was a dri­ving force be­hind the ef­fort. Brom­field, a for­mer stand­out ath­lete at St. Eliz­a­beth Tech­ni­cal High School, shared a heart­felt video ex­plain­ing her mo­ti­va­tion to “give back” to the com­mu­ni­ty that sup­port­ed her through­out her youth.

“The com­mu­ni­ty was al­ways help­ing me out, whether it was in high school to go to Penn Re­lays, they raised mon­ey, tak­ing me to school for free. So I re­al­ly want­ed to give back,” Brom­field said, vis­i­bly moved af­ter wit­ness­ing the wide­spread dev­as­ta­tion.

The mis­sion was of­fi­cial­ly launched by Noah Lyles via his X (for­mer­ly Twit­ter) ac­count, where he an­nounced the col­lab­o­ra­tion with Pow­ell through his Lyles Broth­ers Sports Foun­da­tion.

“Hey, Every­one, the Lyles Broth­ers Sports Foun­da­tion and Asafa Pow­ell are team­ing up to send aid to small­er com­mu­ni­ties in Ja­maica! We have al­ready set a trip for St. Eliz­a­beth,” Lyles stat­ed.

But their work is far from over. Lyles ex­tend­ed a call to ac­tion, en­cour­ag­ing his fol­low­ers and the pub­lic to con­tribute to the on­go­ing re­cov­ery ef­forts.

“Please help us raise mon­ey for our next trip to where we will be tar­get­ing ar­eas in West­mor­land and Trelawny. No amount is too Big Or Small. THANK YOU!”

For­mer record hold­er Pow­ell, who lives in Ja­maica, said he jumped at the op­por­tu­ni­ty to as­sist those in ur­gent need.

“There are peo­ple who are suf­fer­ing right now, and as much as I can help, I will help. I am in a bet­ter po­si­tion to help, and I see a lot of peo­ple help­ing, and I must give a big thanks to Noah and Junelle.”

CMC