Marjorie Prentice Saunders was born in 1913 in St Mary and was trained at Bethlehem Teachers’ College in Jamaica. She then went on to be trained for full-time ministry at the Women’s Missionary College in St. Colm’s, Scotland. She also completed training at the Covenant College in Canada and the Presbyterian Theological College in Cambridge, England. She went on to distinguish herself as she worked in the church and the wider community both in Jamaica and in Sheffield, United Kingdom, where she worked in the ministry with Caribbean immigrants. As a pioneer, Madge became the first Deaconess and the second Jamaican full-time female church worker for the Presbyterian Church in Jamaica. She later became the first Black Deaconess of the Presbyterian Church in Britain.
She later worked for a nun's organization for the elderly and assisted in the Homeless Children's House. She was ordained as a Minister of Religion and became a Deaconess whilst working at the Presbyterian Church of England. She later wrote a book called "Living in Britain." Parts of this book were transferred into printed booklets and they were translated into several languages, discussing mechanisms though which racial harmony could be achieved. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. Madge Saunders died in 2009 at the age of 96 in Jamaica.
Madge Saunders made a huge contribution to childhood education in Jamaica. She was instrumental in facilitating the training of basic schoolteachers, having worked previously for the Kelly Lawson Training Centre, a tourist industry-training organisation.
Whilst working as a travelling organiser for the United Church in Jamaica, she saw that untrained people were running several schools for small children. In 1950, she selected six people from six different parishes and ran a six-week basic training course. These six people became the first basic schoolteachers who had been trained in Jamaica. The Kelly Lawson