Each year Jamaican schools select their top male and female spellers to represent them in the island-wide spelling bee Competition.   At the school level, each class chooses their champion and that student competes in the school competition. 

When Love Beyond Words founder, Clenord Ferguson, was in the 6th grade he won his classroom competition and had only one weekend to study for the school-wide bee. He was prepared to work hard and represent his class well, but he didn’t have a spelling bee study book.

Clenord’s family lived in a tenement building, where eight families shared the eight bedrooms. Clenord spent the weekend trying to find a quiet place to study the spelling bee book his teacher lent him; cramming his head full of the words on the pages. On Sunday his mother was cleaning their room, so Clenord took the book outside. When he was only halfway through the spelling words, his mother said it was time to come in and put the book away.

Clenord did well at the spelling bee that Monday morning, and before long he was one of only three boys left in the competition. But then it happened; the very place that Clenord’s mother called him away from the study book was the very next word called out to spell. 

Love Beyond Words is partnering with the Dupont Primary School, the school Clenord attended, to sponsor their annual spelling bee—which will include providing spelling bee study books for all students participating.