Editorial | Recapturing communities

One day last week, this newspaper reported on the efforts of a dedicated group of residents of August Town, St Andrew, to bring peace to their often-volatile community.

A football tournament they launched last December is ongoing between teams from several sections of the community where young men frequently fought each other with guns. Sections of August Town became off-limits to either side. People would die in these clashes.

“We chose football because football has the attention of males, who possess the energy to make or break the communities,” said Kenneth Wilson, a long-time August Town peace campaigner and a restorative justice officer.

On the same day the August Town story was published, The Gleaner reported on the small rural community of Chambers Pen at the other end of the island, in the northwestern parish of Hanover. In one case, the local government and rural development minister had signed a contract for road rehabilitation in the community as part of an integrated development scheme.

Separately, the Government’s Social Development Commission (SDC) made grants of J$500,000 each to 30 residents – 15 men and 15 women – to help support the recipients’ small businesses, ranging from plumbing to farming.

“They needed the funding to obtain new equipment, procure raw materials, and even to restock their businesses to boost their profitability,” said Tova Trench-Anderson, the SDC’s Hanover manager of the grants, which is aimed at promoting entrepreneurship.

Initiatives like those in August Town and Chambers Pen are not unique. Similar efforts, spearheaded by individuals, communities and charities, and sometimes with government backing, take place across Jamaica, seeking to arrest the endemic criminal violence.

JAMAICA NEEDS THEM

This newspaper, as a default, applauds these programmes. Jamaica, with 1,500 homicides a year, a murder rate of over 53 per 100,000 and a large number of criminal gangs, needs them. Unfortunately, knowledge of these initiatives and their outcomes is sparse. Generally, they operate in silos, are unassessed, and provide little opportunity for one to learn from the other, so that successes can be replicated, and mistakes and failures avoided.

More critically, the fact that these interventions receive too little attention causes us to miss opportunities to scale up the big wins and to create big partnerships necessary to transform Jamaica into a gentler, more disciplined and decent society most of its citizens hope for. Put another way, there is no need to invent the tool every time stakeholders plan initiatives to attack problems like those that August Town’s Peace Builders Association or other communities are already grappling with.

In that regard, given that the Social Development Commission already spearheads community upliftment programmes, it might consider establishing itself as a clearing house/database of social intervention projects and strategies that have been, or are being, undertaken by government agencies and NGOs islandwide. These might be posted online at a networking portal to which groups and individuals have access.

Further, the SDC could use its position as the Government’s primary social intervention agency to leverage broad participation in a national project to deepen community engagement in initiatives undertaken on their behalf, rather than being passive recipients of the good intentions of well-meaning outsiders.

CREATING A STRONG SENSE OF COMMUNITY

Here, too, there is no need to reinvent the wheel. The SDC could marry some of what it already does, such as its cultural/arts festivals, and other people’s initiatives to reinvigorate a national community movement.

For example, but for its suspension since the period of the COVID-19 pandemic, the National House Trust (NHT) has since 1993 sponsored a ‘Best Scheme’ competition in the housing schemes it has developed.

The competition, the NHT says, provides an opportunity for residents of these schemes to “impact the development of their communities through training, followed by assessment of community projects … in areas such as governance, security, the environment, health and community management”. The assessments are done at the parish, county and nationals levels with the help of private- and public-sector and civic society groups.

This is proof of a concept that the SDC, with the incorporation of cultural elements, can scale up and apply in communities nationally, outside NHT schemes. Community groups and their leaders, working with national and local institutions like municipal authorities, can be made to have a stake in ensuring their communities are maintained and that agreed projects are completed, so that they can be judged for best in their class for a particular area, community or parish, and so on.

This healthy competition is also about creating a strong sense of community – ones which residents directly participate in building, can claim ownership, and can be proud.

Indeed, when people feel good about where they live, it is more likely they will also feel good about themselves and less likely to engage in antisocial behaviour. That is probably less work for someone like August Town’s Mr Wilson, which he, and almost anyone, would not mind. But getting it done is hard work, which the SDC should begin.