18 communities benefit from social-intervention programmes

Eighteen communities across the island are benefiting from various social interventions and infrastructural initiatives being undertaken by the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF), aimed at promoting public safety and transformation.

The initiatives are being administered as part of the Integrated Community Development Project (ICDP) and are funded through a US$42 million loan from the World Bank.

The project, which commenced in 2014 and is expected to end in 2020, will engage underserved communities in Clarendon, Kingston, St Andrew, St Ann, St Catherine, St James and Westmoreland.

SEVERAL COMPONENTS

Managing Director at JSIF Omar Sweeney said the project has several components, including road rehabilitation, improving electricity connections and construction of community spaces; improvement in public safety, which covers replacement of zinc fences with alternatives, and training of community mediators.

The project also has a youth livelihood and development component with a focus on education and skills training programmes for at-risk youth, after-school programmes and training in animation, entertainment and the arts.

“Under the ICDP, we are doing electricity regularisation and hosting community fairs to allow persons to sign up for their birth certificates. We are doing skills training and dealing with unattached youth and we are dealing with dispute resolution with several ongoing interventions. It is about crime-prevention initiatives, providing better roads and ensuring better policing of these communities,” Sweeney explained.