WROC still helping women 27 years later

THE Women's Resource and Outreach Centre (WROC), which provides support to women and their families in communities in Kingston and St Thomas, is still reaping success with its programmes, 27 years after its inception.

The group, which came into existence on International Women's Day, March 8, 1983, is today providing support to persons living in the Lyndhurst Road /Greenwich Park inner-city communities of Kingston, and in ex-banana producing communities in St Thomas.

These programmes are focussed on health, legal services, counselling and education, outreach and support.

Yesterday, WROC executive director Dorothy Whyte, addressing reporters and editors at the Observer's weekly Monday Exchange meeting on International Women's Day, said the NGO had been working continuously to ensure that its programmes improve the lives of women and their families in the communities served to make them more self-sufficient.

"In this area there are a lot of single parent families headed by women," Whyte said of the work in the Lyndhurst Road/Greenwich Park communities. "All programmes are oriented to improving the family. We're trying to address as many issues relating to family development as we can."

She listed the group's projects, which include a homework programme at WROC's offices on Beechwood Avenue, Kingston; a health clinic, seniors' club, drama group and women's club, among others.

And with assistance from the United Nations Development Programme, she said WROC was also recently involved in a violence prevention programme working with at-risk youth in the area.

"We help people to develop for themselves, to have better lives, to be empowered so they can see that they can develop on their own and not look for handouts," Whyte said.

Additionally, the group has been implementing new women's leadership projects, including the United Nations Democracy Fund-sponsored Strengthening Women's Leadership initiative, which has been making an impact in the movement to increase women's participation on public and private sector boards in Jamaica.

Whyte also said that WROC, with sponsorship from the European Union (EU), was also instrumental in starting livelihood projects benefiting ex-banana workers in five St Thomas communities -- Somerset, Mount Vernon, Trinityville, Johnson Mountain and Spring Bank.

"We not only help the men, but we really ensure that the women are engaged," Whyte said. "They have been able to identify different means of livelihood through the help that we have instigated."

And now some 300 ex-banana workers and their families are finding new livelihood, through poultry rearing, cash crop farming, slaughterhouses and animal rearing in St Thomas. These farmers had lost their main sources of income after the decline of the banana trade in Jamaica.

"Now they're earning money and selling, money they would not have earned because they'd be sitting down at home," Whyte said.

She said that WROC, with the EU's assistance, has also helped in disaster mitigation in that parish, by helping with the building of three check dams in Somerset to prevent homes from being washed away by landslides when it rains.