West Kgn residents enjoy therapeutic trip to Negril

OCHO RIOS, St Ann:

Residents of Hannah Town, Denham Town, Trench Town, Fletcher's Land and Tivoli Gardens in west Kingston are lauding the efforts of the Citizen Security and Justice Programme (CSJP) in helping them to get past the recent violence which has left many of them emotionally disturbed.

"I feel so good on a day like today because I have got a chance to travel out of my community and experience a different environment here in Negril. It feels so good and I feel so free right now," Denham Town resident Samantha Hyde said last Wednesday.

Hyde was among 220 west Kingston residents (150 children and 70 adults) who journeyed from their communities to western Jamaica for a two-day fun experience at the Kool Runnings Water Park in Negril, Westmoreland, after overnighting at the Holiday Inn Sunspree Resort in Montego Bay, St James.

Therapeutic trip

The outing, organised by the CSJP and sponsored under a joint public and private-sector partnership, is the latest in a series of therapeutic trips for residents of west Kingston.

President of the Denham Town Community Development Com-mittee (CDC), Pauline Perez, said she was grateful to the CSJP, and its partners, for providing the opportunity to "break free" and move forward in the healing process.

"I went to places like Tapioca Village in St Mary and Cranbrook Flower Forest in St Ann, and these outings have been working for me because I lost my cousin ... and I was so upset with the police and just about everybody but, after coming out and talking to psychiatrists and other persons, I realised that being upset does not help and these trips have helped me to de-stress a whole lot," she explained.

Tivoli Gardens resident Sashana Tomlinson said the programme was a start to many positive things in her community.

"Due to the unrest in western Kingston, most persons (in Tivoli Gardens) were traumatised and were forced to spend days inside the community, so I think these trips have helped a lot because persons are getting the opportunity to go out and see different places and just be in a different environment," she said.

Access to counselling

CSJP Community Action Officer, Marcia Flynn, confirmed that the therapeutic trips were doing a lot for the residents, as they were not limited to fun and games but also gave them an opportunity to access counselling.

She said that this coming Wednesday another set of residents from west Kingston will visit Kool Runnings Water Park.

Clinical psychologist Kamala McWhinney said persons have been responding positively to the counselling sessions and, for her, being part of the rejuvenation programme has been very rewarding.

"What we try to do on these outings is to get a feel, on the spot, of where the residents are in terms of their grieving and their levels of trauma and based on that we have informal, sometimes more structured sessions with them to get them to start processing the grief or processing the trauma, so that we can hope for some positive resolution in the long term," she said.