PMI West ready to step up school intervention programme

WESTERN BUREAU:

IN LIGHT of several incidents of school violence involving students across Jamaica, the Peace Management Initiative’s (PMI) western Jamaica branch is prepared to ramp up its school intervention programme which was recently revived with the resumption of face-to-face classes, after having stalled due to the COVID-19 pandemic’s restrictions.

Speaking to The Gleaner on Friday, PMI West’s programme coordinator and administrator Debbie-Ann Dalley said that the programme, which started in 2018, will pick up the pace within primary schools.

“What the PMI has already started and will continue to do, now that schools are back in full face-to-face mode, is to continue with our school programme that we had before, where we liaise and work with the guidance counsellors within the schools. They will actually refer to us students who they see presenting maladaptive behaviours, and we will do group counselling and interventions with these students,” said Dalley.

“We start the programme at the primary level, and it is also in extension with the high-school students. We are on the ball, as we have already started, and it is just for it to be intensified with the primary schools, and especially those schools that are in volatile communities,” Dalley explained.

She was speaking immediately following the launch of the Jamaica Public Service (JPS) Foundation’s Empowering At-Risk Youths Towards Positive Outcomes Project, which took place at the West Jamaica Conference of Seventh-day Adventists in Mt Salem, St James.

That programme is geared towards empowering 40 at-risk youth in St James and St Catherine to become employable, and to be redirected away from crime.

“When we are able to see what is happening in our schools, and that there are youth who can be engaged in programmes like these to better themselves, we can only give our full support to programmes like these,” Dalley said, concerning the JPS Foundation’s launch. “We just hope that there will be other organisations who will actually follow suit and put themselves out there to address this situation, and to reach out to our at-risk youth within our country.”

The mandate of peace management is needed among young people at this time, in light of several recent incidents of youth violence among students. These include the March 21 stabbing and subsequent death of William Knibb Memorial High School student Camal Hall in Trelawny, and the March 30 stabbing and injuring of a female student of Petersfield High School in Petersfield, Westmoreland.

Peaceful conflict management for students has been a long-standing goal for programmes such as the Peace And Love in Society initiative, formerly Peace And Love in Schools, which has sought for several years to get peace management and conflict resolution established as part of school curricula islandwide, including as recently as 2014.

In the meantime, Ramsay McDonald, chairman of the JPS Foundation and senior vice-president of JPS’s customer service division, told last week’s programme launch that everyone must do their part to address Jamaica’s crime issue.

“Crime is one of the biggest problems facing our country and we all have a role to play in fixing this problem. At the JPS Foundation, we believe that education, training and capacity building can help to fight crime,” said McDonald. “We believe in empowering people to do practical things; and we believe that when people are provided with knowledge and training, they are better able to make a positive contribution to our society.”