Project ‘GEAR’ Shift Transforms Lives of 53 August Town Parents

Fifty-three parents from August Town in St. Andrew had their lives positively transformed through their participation in the Project GEAR Shift programme.

GEAR Shift, which stands for Growth, Empowerment, Advancement and Resilience, was launched in 2024 as a peace-building initiative in Greater August Town.

Initially implemented through the former United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Positive Pathways Activity in Jamaica by Democracy International, the project focused on empowering residents across the five communities that make up Greater August Town.

The Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ), through its Community Renewal Programme (CRP), has been a key stakeholder in the initiative and is currently overseeing the implementation of a six-month, $15-million project running from April to September, focused on a business development incubator, a Community Parental Support Network, and a peace-promotion campaign.

Project Manager for GEAR Shift, Natalie Wheatle, tells JIS News that the three-day parent-training component of the broader Community Parental Support Network was developed following consultations with parents to determine the type of support they needed.

She notes that many participants identified trauma as a major concern and expressed a need for psychosocial first-aid support to help them address unresolved childhood experiences that could affect their parenting.

The Project Manager says parents’ feedback was used to develop the curriculum for the training component.

As a result, the response exceeded expectations, with organisers initially planning to train 40 parents and anticipating that about 30 would complete the course, but ultimately surpassing that target.

“On day one, I think it was 45 parents who showed up, so we were oversubscribed. By day two, we had 53 parents showing up,” Ms. Wheatle says.

She attributes the strong response to the relevance of the training.

“They were so impressed with the training; they were so impressed with the facilities and the fact that the training was responding to their needs. They brought in their own friends and their own family to… benefit from the three-day training session that we were having,” she says.

Ms. Wheatle points out that the camp covered several areas, including positive parenting techniques.

“These included their learning how to support a child’s academic development and working with their children on conflict-resolution techniques. We also had some financial literacy training, and we did communication and positive discipline. We [also] worked with parents in offering them some sort of therapeutic sessions on how they manage their stresses and how they deal with their own individual traumas,” she outlines.

All 53 parents completed the training. The parental education component of GEAR Shift concluded on July 16 with all participants receiving self-care packages and $30,000 back-to-school book vouchers from the PIOJ in recognition of their commitment and successful completion of the course.

The initiative also led to the establishment of two parental support groups to provide peer-to-peer support and help sustain the benefits of the training beyond the formal sessions.

Technical Specialist for Socio-Economic Development in the CRP, Charmaine Brimm, tells JIS News that the practical nature of the training was evident in the feedback received from participants.

“Persons were so grateful. They expressed their gratitude for the training because it provided tips to help them to apply to their immediate situations,” she says.

Ms. Brimm recalls one parent who shared that the engagement had changed the way she responded to concerns about her daughter’s behaviour.

“The parent said her daughter would sometimes tell lies, and that her natural reaction when others complained was to become defensive and aggressive. After the training, however, she was able to use more effective communication techniques to address the situation with her child,” she discloses.

Ms. Brimm said the experience underscores the value of tailoring programmes to address the specific needs and challenges of participants.

“We have to commend Democracy International, because part of why this training was so effective is because of how the programme was designed. There are a lot of parenting programmes and they tend to be very high level and theoretical. But to design a programme that meets the current needs of parents… the approach was going in first to have those one-on-one discussions with the parents [in terms of] where they are at… and that was what informed the design of the programme,” the Technical Specialist adds.

Ms. Brimm maintains that, based on the outcome, “this is a programme with a methodology that must be replicated”.

For Ms. Wheatle, the establishment of the parental support groups ensures that the work continues beyond the close-out of the parental education component, providing ongoing support for participants.

The groups are expected to provide ongoing peer support and help parents reinforce the skills and lessons gained through the initiative as they work to strengthen relationships with their children and contribute to healthier families across Greater August Town.