Growth & Jobs | Young developer targets inner-city youth for projects

A YOUNG housing developer is seeking to use skills gained from the Jamaica Combined Cadet Force and service clubs to positively impact the youth by providing employment opportunities on his firm’s construction sites.

Managing director of Alfran Development Limited, Ricardo Foster, said over 60 inner-city youth were employed during the development of the firm’s first housing project, Genesis 28, on Waterloo Road in St Andrew.

He pointed out that after analysing their work, he saw the need to invest in their growth.

“I will be incorporating some skills training and personal development - getting people the basic dignity, a birth certificate, and a bank account - help develop these young people who are coming out of some of the most marginalised areas,” Foster told JIS News at the recent ribbon cutting for the housing complex.

He noted that as a high-school ninth -grader, he could not spell a four-letter word until he went into the Cadet movement and his life was transformed.

Foster said this enabled him to leave high school with three subjects, and after getting an additional three, he pursued law at the University of Technology Jamaica (UTech).

“I see myself in them. They have ambition, and they have aspirations. These are young people who want to be part of something, and you can’t allow gangsters to recruit them. If there is a positive institution that wants to recruit them, they will come. I am inspired to recruit them, to do something positive, and I want to develop them,” he added.

With rigorous monitoring by the Jamaica Mortgage Bank (JMB), which financed the project, Foster pointed out that his firm learned and adhered to best practices in construction.

“I don’t need to question the integrity of the houses because of the oversight provided by the JMB. I want to applaud the bank for making me feel comfortable. It forced me to learn construction the right way,” Foster said.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness said the quality of the construction was evident. “From what you have built, it would seem that you have conducted yourself well in the actual construction process,” he said.

“We need more developers like you. It is heartening to see a young man come to the fore, run such a massive project, and did not sacrifice decency and integrity. We need more developers like yourself to come on board, to partner with the Government, to build the 70,000 units that we need,” Holness added.

For his part, JMB Managing Director Courtney Wynter said Genesis 28 was an “ideal project to add a different look to Kingston, and these [developers] were, in our eyes, ordinary people”.

He added that for the past 50 years, the JMB has been empowering ordinary developers, and the project done by Alfran was a good model for public-private partnership.

“It was efficiently done, the developers are model developers, and we are proud of that,” Wynter said.

JIS