Breaking the cycle
LASCO Chin Foundation targets at-risk, vulnerable youths through work/earn initiative
THE LASCO Chin Foundation, the umbrella organisation established by the LASCO Affiliated Companies to honour Jamaican standouts in public service, is now on a mission to save youths at risk of a life of poverty or crime.
The brainchild of Lascelles Chin, who rose from poverty in rural Jamaica to lead one of the Jamaica’s most formidable manufacturing and distribution companies, the foundation has started to spread its wings in programmes that it hopes will get the support of other local private-sector entities and persons in the diaspora.
Annual staples such as nurse, teacher, principal, and cop of the year, as well as Releaf Environmental Awareness Programme, which the foundation organises, are being joined by the recently formed Sustainable SocioEconomic Intervention (SSI) Model Entrepreneurship Programme.
“Our philosophy is that once we make profit, we help Jamaicans who need help. It cannot be that you make profit and skim it off and don’t help,” Chin, the foundation’s chairman, told a Gleaner Editors’ Forum recently.
The Teacher of Year, which honours the best in the classrooms, is the oldest of the company programmes.
“I knew what I used to get from teachers in the old days. Everybody was complaining that the teachers were not interested, and I said let me start the Teacher of the Year. And I found that the teachers were dedicated. They really help. Their pay is not that good. There are a lot of them that really have the interest of education,” said Chin.
He noted that following the coronation of the first Teacher of the Year, many children from the school expressed a desire to become teachers.
With ears close to the ground, Chin next sought to honour the much-maligned members of the Jamaica Constabulary Force with the LASCO Top Cop competition.
“When I started the programme, the police themselves did not believe that it could be sustained, and they didn’t even want to participate. Now the reverse is we cannot accommodate all who want to come.
“After that it was the nurses, and we started by helping them with public relations, and when they had summer camps, we helped them. And that’s going 20 years now,” Chin told the forum.
He said it was always his dream to have a foundation that would help with individuals who were at risk for crime and violence. Although the dream became a reality three years ago, he wouldn’t fully launch the foundation until he found someone “good to lead it and to make a difference”.
For him, starting a foundation and having it fold soon after was not an option, and that was how former University of Technology (UTech) Professor Rosalea Hamilton entered through the door, and into the leader’s seat.
“We are two of a kind. And that is how it started. I was really blown away by the programme she has. It’s not only to train them, but at the same time we used the LASCO products for them to sell to earn money. We are also benefiting, because we are selling our products and they are earning,” said Chin.
Having left the classroom at UTech where she served as vice-president of community service and development, Hamilton is now committed to the foundation’s goal of breaking the circle of intergenerational poverty and crime.
“It’s a very ambitious agenda. We thought to put two major programmes on the table. Working with youngster from about age 10, and we work with them through their primary school years and help to prepare them for the Primary Exit Profile (PEP), to improve their chances of getting into good schools,” Hamilton told the forum.
For those who don’t make the cut, the programmes help them through their high-school years, guiding them away from gangs, and crime and violence, so that they will be able to leave school with the requisite skills for better life. Alliances have been formed with other non-governmental local and community organisations to reach those most at risk, added Hamilton.
For those who fall through the cracks and don’t get the requisite educational skills, the foundation targets that through the ages of 18 to 35 with its entrepreneurship programme.
“The thinking there is if we identify those youngsters who are now facing life choices and their choices is to pursue activities that can generate income, we want to help. We have targeted them,” explained Hamilton.
The identified individuals from 11 communities were taken into a structured programme of sales for six months.
The first group was made up of 21 persons but only nine made it through, as the others determined that they were not cut out to operate a business.
With the success of the nine, the foundation is taking them through the next phase where the will be mentored and supported for several years in their businesses, while it prepares to accept the next group of young at-risk persons to be trained as entrepreneurs.