SW Caribbean Delights<\/a>, in North Lakeland in 2013. Since then, she says she\u2019s kept in touch with loved ones back home \u2014 many she hasn\u2019t heard from since Melissa made landfall.<\/p>\n\u201cLike totally everything is gone, so I have not been able to reach anyone. I don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on, so it\u2019s really, really depressing right now,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n
Thankfully, Williams says her restaurant has helped keep her mind busy, along with finding ways to help. She and her team started a hurricane relief fund, collecting supplies and monetary donations to send to the hardest-hit areas.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know there are so many people that are really doing this. It\u2019s just about finding the right channels to send it through, so it gets to the right place, so that\u2019s what we\u2019re trying to do right now,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re also calling on city commissioners to help raise support for local businesses and organizations in their efforts. She says Jamaica is a resilient country but can\u2019t bounce back without everyone\u2019s help.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo whatever we have to do for Jamaica, we will do it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
For those who would like to drop off a donation, Caribbean Delights is located on Daughtery Road. It\u2019s open from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday and from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAKELAND, Fla. \u2014\u00a0Several businesses in the Tampa Bay area are working to help with hurricane relief efforts in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[23076,767,28,115,1911,135,137,136],"class_list":["post-32725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-alexis-jones","tag-app-community","tag-florida","tag-news","tag-polk-county","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}