Westmoreland Youth Gets New Lease On Life

A chance conversation with a friend about gaining a job set the stage for what has turned out to be a life-changing opportunity for 24-year-old Kamal Kerr. 

The youngster, who up to about a year ago was unemployed, now works at a major hotel in the Negril area, after receiving skills training in food and beverage under the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded Local Partner Development (LPD) project. 

Kamal, who is from Grange Hill in Westmoreland, is one of approximately 650 young people, who benefited from the transformational services provided under the recently concluded violence prevention programme, which involved partnership with the Government. 

LPD was a six-year activity funded implemented by FHI 360, which targeted at-risk youth from 30 vulnerable communities across the island. 

It supported the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI) framework by collaborating with key actors from government, civil society, academia, and the private sector to advance youth crime and violence prevention through secondary and tertiary initiatives. 

Over its duration, the programme provided vocational skills training in areas such as customer service, food and beverage, and electrical installation for 289 persons.  

Participants also received mentorship, livelihood and psychosocial support. 

In addition, 109 persons were placed in jobs facilitated by 25 private sector partners, and 143 youth micro enterprises were supported. 

Kamal tells JIS News that the programme provided a lifeline from his stagnant existence.  

“I was at home not doing anything and here was this opportunity presenting itself on a platter. I would be a fool not to get involved and see what it is about,”  he says. 

The youngster, who  joined the programme in June 2022, says he started the training in September and by January of 2023 he was employed. 

“I am working now thanks to this programme. Before I would do a little construction work here and there, sometimes hustle on the side but they actually paid for our schooling. I would like to call myself a family person, I really wanted to help my family and I saw things that needed changing in my family and that’s why I joined this programme. I saw where I could actually be better and help my family at the same time,” he tells JIS News.  

USAID-LPD Chief of Party, Morana Smodlaka Krajnovic, explains that the programme employed the cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) approach for the first time in Jamaica, which provided “great results” in addressing youth crime and violence. 

“We’ve called it ‘transforming our perspectives’ because it was a way of helping persons find new ways to see the world around them – how they control their anger, how they control their impulses and teaching them to make better choices in life,” she explains. 

Kemal says the mentors and the rap sessions helped him to view life from a different perspective.  

“Most of us smoke and we were asked what our life goal was, I never really thought of that question before. It was like a total revelation because we get up and spend about $2000 to smoke but our mentor explained that if we should check how much money that was in a month, we could invest that money; I was in shock,” he says. 

“The drug counselling was really helpful because it helped to open my eyes. The amount of money we spend in maintaining the smoking habit we could buy a cow and keep making money from that cow in one month if we were in farming. So, stuff like that, a lot of us didn’t think of in terms of how to manage our money,” he adds. 

Kemal tells JIS News that he was especially grateful to the case workers from the Ministry of National Security who worked alongside the programme participants to ensure that they received the necessary support along the way.  

Senior Case Management Coordinator at the Ministry, Orville Simmonds, tells JIS News that the case management was delivered in two parts.  

“We did risk assessment using the instruments that the Ministry had developed in years past. This helped FHI 360 to identify those prospective participants, who are at risk of committing violence. Based on the results of the assessment, our case managers would have coordinated the services required by each individual participant,” Mr. Simmonds outlines. 

He notes that the Ministry’s case managers did the “handholding” of the participants in the programme.  

“A very important role that the case managers carried out was what we call motivational interviewing. This is providing the necessary guidance, encouragement and mentorship to the participants so that while they were engaged in the programme they would have had someone there along the way,” he says.  

Kamal tells JIS News he is forever indebted to the programme. 

“The mentors, everyone from the bottom of my heart, I want to say ‘thank you’. I wish this programme would never end because crime is making my community stagnant and this has made my life better,” he says.