Jamalco Community Council helps schools

Christopher Serju, Gleaner Writer

HAYES, Clarendon: MEMBERS OF the Jamalco Refinery Community Council are going back to school and the teachers and students in these Clarendon schools will be much the better off for their presence.

From helping with back-to-school expenses for needy students, the council's role has grown to include social intervention for troubled students, Chairperson Lorine Metcalf Cousins recently told The Gleaner.

"We are in dialogue with the schools too that are close to us," said Cousins. "We have devotion with them, we go in teams and assist with counselling here and there where we can assist, and if there is a problem they would call us and we would go and meet with parents and students and talk to them."

It was these talks which led to the decision to host a parenting seminar in May that is observed annually as Child Month.

"What we are trying to do is incorporate all the parents and students from those areas and have a parenting seminar," Cousins explained. "We are targeting the delinquent parents and frustrated students, some of whom are depressed and are in need of some attention. What we are going to do at the end of that seminar is to identify two leaders to monitor two parents and those children, and then they will monitor them in the schools to make sure that they are attending and where they fall short and where we can assist."

The concept for the seminar was informed by the realisation that at Hayes Primary and Junior High a lot of students are not turning up for school, even though they are on PATH. However, the seminar will not be restricted to students of this school.

"How we are going to select the persons for this seminar is that we will be going into all the schools from our area and ask them to give us a list of the persons that they would want to participate in the seminar which will target troubled students. We want to identify the reasons for their behaviour - whether it's a matter of depression, or other problems stemming from home and seek to help them to address the root causes in a very practical way," the businesswoman explained.

support

The council has been supporting its social intervention with practical measures, such as when the students reportedly set fire to a guardhouse at the Vere Technical High School. In addition to trying to find out the cause of such bizarre behaviour and seeking counselling for those involved, the council sought the support of Jamalco contractors who contributed material to build a "state-of-the-art" sentry box by community members.

"We started it as a Labour Day project and then took it over full time and did an excellent sentry box. We put on washroom and everything. A big, nice room and put chairs and stuff like that in there, really an excellent sentry box," she recalled.

The council plans to donate a multimedia projector to the Hayes Primary and Junior High School with funds raised from the rally cards with the affiliated citizens' associations.

In all of this, Metcalf Cousins gives credit to Jamalco personnel such as Blossom Laidlaw for her pioneer work in helping to establish the template for communities and the bauxite company. She believes that Leo Lambert, Jamalco's corporate services manager, has built on this goodwill platform, talking the relationship to a new high.