COLLINS...Working assiduously to increase our student population

WHEN leaders in one Kingston church saw that its female members were looking outside the church rather than inside for suitable male partners, and that many of their male members were uneducated and unemployed, they decided to start a school.

This was how Emmanuel Academic Institute began in 1986, with 20 male members inside the Emmanuel Apostolic Church building on Heroes Circle.

The Emmanuel Academic Institute is housed in an immaculate structure, inside the Emmanuel Apostolic Church's conference centre, Slipe Road, Kingston. In the last 16 years, a total of 500 students have passed through the doors of the institute, 70 per cent of whom have maintained good scores in their exams. Among these have been persons offered free and partial tuition by the church.(Photos: Bryan Cummings)

"I noticed that there was an incompatability between the male and female members of the church," Samuel Collins, an elder of the church and principal of the institute told the Education Observer.

"The women were progressive and updating themselves academically, while most of the men were unskilled, so it was difficult for the women to find suitable partners among the members."

Inside the computer lab. The school works with HEART to offer training in Information Technology.

The men were mostly labourers and low skilled, low paid workers while the church women were largely teachers, dressmakers, secretaries and lawyers.

"At the time I was an adult Sunday School teacher and I used to hear the complaints."

Some of the students attending the Institute.

So dividing the men into three groups - illiterate, functionally literate and literate - Collins and a team of teachers from the church began the arduous process that would eventually see many of their male members sitting and passing the CXC exams.

At the time enthusiasm was high, he said. Passes were good. The education drive seemed a success, they thought.

But their plan worked only for five years and now, 16 years later, the school is struggling to attract male students, even after expanding to include members of the community?

According to Collins, "The number of men that turned out and graduated from the programme was high for the first five years, but gradually a lapse set in.

"What I found out was that in the early 90s, with the advent of this get rich quick mentality, sold especially by our DJs, and (with) a great percentage of our men coming from the inner city, they tended to adopt the principle of trying to find quick money, rather than getting into the long haul of being properly trained."

Of course, there were a few other factors that may have contributed to the waning interest, Collins reasoned.

For one, the school relocated from Heroes Circle to Slipe Rd, next door to Wolmers' Boys school.

Secondly, the church felt it necessary to offer a stipend to its faithful volunteers, who were underwriting their own expenses, including bus fares and book purchases. And, with the class sizes growing the church felt obliged to recover some of its expenses from the students who were benefitting.

Thirdly, and most importanly, Collins said, "We didn't want to develop a freeness mentality."

They started charging each student $5.00 per subject per term. This would later increase to $1800 where it now stands.

"Even if students cannot afford all of it, we don't turn them back, because the school is more a ministry to the community rather than an income generator," Collins said.

The school's thrust into the community, attracted younger students from all over the Corporate Area, but student enrolment has still remained a small fraction of the 120 it can hold.

As part of their recruitment effort, the school recently diversified their offers.

Besides offering day and evening classes for CXC and GCE 'O Level in 11 subjects, the institute also works in conjunction with HEART/National Training Agency to offer a nine month course in Information Technology. Plans are in place to further expand its programmes to include seminars and advanced training for professionals in finance, leadership skills, time management, cash management, customer relations and selling techniques.

Said Collins: "We are working assiduously to increase our student population and so extend our benefits to a wider cross-section of Jamaicans."

One downturn for some, however, is that the school no longer accepts persons who cannot read or write.

"We encourage such persons, who live in the area, to attend classes offered by JAMAL," Collins said.

Feeding the multitude

DANGEROUS PETS

Pepper Pot