A US government-funded centre, aimed at stimulating peace and entrepreneurism in two of the capital’s blighted and often tension-riddled communities, was formally opened in the Grants Pen area yesterday with a warning to residents that the project is not about providing financial hand-outs.

“(We) will not be giving money donations to the residents,” stressed Mosina Jordan, the head of the Jamaican office of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

“We believe that it is better to teach a person to fish than to give that person a fish, hence this project is about empowerment,” she added. “It is a step toward helping the residents realise their potential to take their rightful place in the wider Jamaican society.”

The Peace Centre, located at 32 Shortwood Road, Kingston 8, is to focus on the Grants Pen community as well as the Cedar Valley/Standpipe communities in Liguanea.

It is from there that the Kingston Restoration Company-led project, the Peace and Prosperity Programme, will operate, covering matters such as:

* training in conflict resolution skills;

* the creation of a job bank and the development of employment skills;

* the introduction of micro credit institutions; and

* the organisation of community activities which support and enhance peace.

The Dispute Resolution Foundation, which will provide the mediation training, will operate the centre in conjunction with the communities.

The project is funded from a US$2.6-million grant that USAID awarded to the KRC in March last year and since then the KRC — better-known for its downtown Kingston project of restoring derelict buildings and supporting communities — has been working with Grants Pen and Cedar Valley/Standpipe residents to develop the Peace and Prosperity Programme.

Grants Pen, located near to some of Kingston and St Andrew’s most sought after addresses, is known for its periodic eruptions of violence between communities divided by politics and a few metres of narrow lanes.

It was there violence broke out late last year when police controversially killed reputed area “don” Andrew Phang, to whose funeral parliamentary representative, the Jamaica Labour Party’s Delroy Chuck, sent a glowing eulogy.

Chuck said at yesterday’s ceremony that he believed the centre will make a seminal contribution to the peace process in Grants Pen and surrounding communities.

“Grants Pen still has a bad name and a bad image, but in time we shall overcome,” he said. “We need to appreciate that peace is a process and not an event. We have to be vigilant and relentlessly work for peace.”

National Security Minister Peter Phillips, who also spoke at the ceremony, said the new project offers a “beacon of hope, not only to Grants Pen, but to the entire society”.

“I hope that the mediators that will be trained here and the peacemakers will become the first bearers of a new culture of peace and harmony that will spread to every inner-city community throughout Jamaica,” said Phillips.

From Jordan, there was a challenge to the people of Grants Pen: to prove to Jamaica “that there can be, and will be peace and prosperity for the people of Grants Pen”.

“I urge you to take up the challenge and strive for a better life for yourselves, your children and your grandchildren,” she said.