Community advocate forecasts dark days if youth not engaged
Published:Friday | March 26, 2021 | 12:21 AMJonielle Daley - Staff Reporter
President of the downtown development area, Nicholas Campbell, is pleading for a joint intervention of various programmes and organisations to dismantle the web of violence in west Kingston.
USAID launched a five-year US$15-million positive pathway programme on Wednesday to implement social interventions for violence prevention in 12 volatile communities across Jamaica, of which Hannah Town, Jones Town and Denham Town are a part.
In addition to the educational, business, life-skills training and employment opportunities that will be provided, over US$3 million will be available in grants, through various Jamaican organisations, to supplement changes in family structure, youth empowerment and community leadership.
However, Campbell, who is also president of the Hannah Town Community Development Committee, acknowledges the efforts made by various organisations to implement social intervention programmes, but declares them ineffectual once there continues to be an incoherent approach with the different communities.
“Everything is so connected and inter-related. If you want to deal with it from the stem, where it’s all coming from, you have to look at the other communities and let whatever interventions that are implemented reflect in the other communities in some sense,” he said, highlighting for example that the violence in Hannah Town relates to all that is happening in west Kingston.
“None of what is happening as it relates to crime and violence is politically motivated, it is all gang-related, stemming from feuds,” he said. “Gangs who are at odds with each other make connections with other gangs who may be at odds with their rival.”
Campbell explained that this type of division and morphing continuously is as a result of intra-related, interrelated and intercommunity conflicts.
Campbell is concerned that the information guiding these social intervention programmes is either not properly researched or outdated. After years of experiencing the criminal climate in west Kingston communities and police divisions, he said the dynamics are continuously changing, which, in turn, makes it more complicated for persons on the “outside” to stay abreast.
In his 15 years of working in community development in west Kingston, Campbell claims that these programmes have mostly been proven to be counterproductive, as they sometimes have great objectives and deliverables but poor implementation. He is imploring programme coordinators, especially those conducting community profiling to provide international partners with information, to work with the community leaders as they are representatives on the ground and can provide real-time, invaluable information “to get a better picture of the issues”.
CONCERTED APPROACH
He added that community leaders are able to champion a more concentrated approach that will target the desired people who, as things are now, are hardly the ones to participate. Campbell warns of greater danger to come if a change is not realised as young people, especially males, view criminal activities as being more lucrative.
There has been a 14 per cent increase in serious crimes in west Kingston from January 1 to February 27 this year compared to the same period in 2020. Currently, Jamaica has the highest homicide rate in the Western Hemisphere.
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Security Dr Horace Chang said the contextual response to community violence brings into focus the involvement of males in gang violence and the extended impact.
“The performance in several areas of education training seems to be falling behind in many ways and create an ecosystem for the emergence of gangs,” he said at the programme’s launch.
Chang pointed to an issue of historic socialisation that has marginalised males by depriving them of an opportunity to attend school and develop their talents in vocational and technical areas.
With that, the positive pathway programme will aim to restore hope to these communities, and particularly young men, as the plan is to steer them down a path of socio-economic sustenance. It will be implemented by Democracy International, which is known for coercing the involvement of the government, private sector and civil society to obtain peace not just for the individual or communities, but for the benefit of the nation.