JCRC gets New Vehicle to Enhance its Activities

The Jamaica Coalition on the Rights of the Child (JCRC) has received a new vehicle valued at $2.5 million from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), to support its activities in promoting the rights of children.
The unit was handed over on February 8 at the official launching of the ‘Eat Right Smile Bright’ Child’s Rights Project at the Marliemount Primary and Infant School in Old Harbour, St. Catherine.
“Our monitoring (of projects) has been slow, because we had only one vehicle. Now UNICEF thought it fit to give us another vehicle that will help us to monitor, so we can go to different places on the same day.
That is going to greatly help the project and the benefit that it brings to children,” Carol Samuels, Executive Director of the JCRC told JIS News.
Mrs. Samuels explained that the monitoring team of five persons would be better able to work with the 35 primary schools across the island that were collaborating with the Coalition.
She pointed out that for the past 15 years, the JCRC has been promoting the rights of children through various activities, including getting primary school teachers to understand the principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and how they could translate those principles into action for the benefit of the children.
Mrs. Samuels noted that Marliemount Primary and Infant School had initiated the ‘Eat Right Smile Bright’ project, by introducing a hot breakfast project to address problems of absenteeism and low performance.
The Coalition has as its funding partners, UNICEF, which provides books, posters and materials, as well as the Environmental Foundation of Jamaica (EFJ).They also collaborate with child development agencies who provide assistance by visiting and monitoring the schools.
Bertrand Bainvel, UNICEF representative, congratulated the teachers for their effort in promoting child’s rights.
“Teachers, you have found a very creative way of translating the Convention of the Rights of the Child in your school. By your action, you have fulfilled your responsibility as adults and as teachers to ensure that your children’s rights to nutrition and education would be met,” he said.
He also commended the JCRC for “conceiving such an innovative and very tangible way of promoting child’s rights in Jamaican communities”.
Principal of the Marliemount Primary and Infant School, Victoria Levy told JIS News that the hot breakfast programme was initiated in the school just before the passage of Hurricane Ivan last September.
“Since the programme has come on stream, we’ve really seen some improvement in a number of students, in their performance in class and just about everything about them physically. They’re doing much better than they used to,” Mrs. Levy noted.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays of each week, some 200 children benefit from the hot breakfast programme.