Our story
A torch lit in Waterhouse that never went out.
What began on a street corner in Kingston, Jamaica in 1993 has grown into a transatlantic mission — rooted in community, sustained by family, and driven by the belief that every child deserves a chance.
Our non-profit story started with a man cooking dumplings on a roadside in Kingston, Jamaica, because the children around him were hungry and he had food to give.
On Christmas Eve, 1993, Clive Oliver Solomon, known to everyone in Waterhouse simply as “Salla,” cleaned the streets of his community with a team of young boys, fed them, and then became their Santa Claus. He handed every child notebooks, pencils, and rulers, because to Clive, a gift without the promise of a future wasn’t much of a gift at all. His aspiration was as simple as it was radical: every child deserved an education, and he intended to do something about it.
Waterhouse was not an easy place to grow up. Crime cast a long shadow, and for many of its children, hope was a luxury they hadn’t been offered. Clive refused to accept that. He wasn’t a wealthy man or a powerful one, but he had something that proved more valuable than either, a genuine and unshakeable love for the children around him, and the conviction that their circumstances shouldn’t be their destiny.
When Clive passed in 1995, the Solomon family made a commitment to continue the work he started. They kept the Christmas Treat alive, year after year, as both a tribute to the man and a promise to the community he had loved so fiercely. In October 2000, they took his vision further, launching the C.O. Solomon Scholarship Program to create real, lasting educational pathways for children across Jamaica’s inner-city communities. As the years passed, the mission kept growing, reaching beyond children to serve the elderly and general population of Waterhouse through an Annual Community Health Fair, and expanding into programs built around sports, cultural awareness, and daily living skills.
Today, the C.O. Solomon Children’s Charity is a U.S.-registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit, with the Solomon family raising funds and building partnerships from the United States while every program, every scholarship, and every Christmas meal is delivered on the ground in Kingston, Jamaica. The work has grown far beyond what one man could have imagined cooking dumplings on a street corner thirty years ago. And yet the spirit behind it hasn’t changed at all.
The torch Clive lit is still burning. His family has made sure of that, and they always will.
Clive Oliver Solomon
—Barrington Solomon
On Christmas Eve, 1993, Clive Oliver Solomon — known affectionately as “Salla” — cleaned the roads of Waterhouse with a team of young boys, cooked for them, and then became their Santa Claus. He fed children, handed out ice cream, and gave every child notebooks, pencils, and rulers. His aspiration was simple and absolute: every child should have an education.
Clive wasn’t a wealthy man. He was a man of profound character — someone who saw the potential locked inside the children of an inner-city community that the world had largely written off, and who refused to accept that their circumstances were their destiny.
When Clive passed in 1995, the Solomon family made a decision. The torch he had lit would not go out. They would carry it forward — in his name, and in his spirit.
Thirty Years of keeping the promise
1993
1995
2000
2005+
Today
Our Mission
Our Vision
