PATH should transition to vehicle of empowerment

THE EDITOR, Madam:

While the Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH) enables economically disempowered groups to have temporary elastic income and participate in the free market, more needs to be done to transition recipients from state dependants to sustained independence.

Shift the programme beyond facilitating the educational advancement of children to also empower parents and homes. Providing cash grants for students is important for educational participation and levelling the success playing field to some extent. However, availing parents or guardians with job placement, career development, and business development skills would help increase income and family development, thus positioning PATH as a vehicle for poverty reduction. Each parent with a child on PATH should participate in personal development, return to school, and be facilitated in a niche area of employment within the private sector. Whether they work or become entrepreneurs, the PATH programme should lead to effective monitoring and evaluation of success targets.

While PATH for children extends up to university, with the university grant, parent development can run for 2-5 years. Therefore, cooperation is required between employment facilitators like HEART and private sector employers to train and employ these parents.

Beyond the free nutritious lunch received to fuel their studies, PATH should equip student recipients with mentors, a niche income-earning trade/skill, and extracurricular activities. Children on the programme should be trained mentors to transition to tertiary studies, earn a skill to utilise as an entrepreneur, or master a sport that can transition into tertiary scholarships or a career.

Providing only free lunch is a step in the right direction, but for youth to be on a sustainable path for community development, they must understand how powerful they can be and be equipped to achieve it.

By working with student services departments of local universities, student leaders, and ideal motivational speakers, I believe PATH can find and train mentors to positively model and guide students.

Children with disabilities should be empowered to find their innate income-earning ability. Whether academic, trade, or sports, each disabled child on PATH should understand the agency needed to thrive while being nurtured to achieve it, despite what the world may say.

There cannot be national development without community development. Our disabled community can have greater independence as in more developed countries.

I cannot continue without acknowledging the current reformation that is taking place through our current governance framework and leadership. However, if the vision is to make Jamaica the place to live, then the poorest who live here should not be poor forever. Too many persons who were on PATH have children who are now on PATH.

I am not saying we should abandon cash transfer. I am asking for PATH to be a vehicle that mobilises Jamaica’s poorest into prosperity.

JEROME PALMER