MONTEGO BAY, St James

Some 60 parents with children in early childhood institutions across St James are being trained in income generating skills under a programme administered by the Ministry of Education’s Region Four Early Childhood Unit.

The aim of the programme, which started on January 23, is to equip unskilled mothers to enable them to earn a living and better care for their children, explained early childhood education officer, Patricia Haughton.

“We find that many of the mothers with children in the early childhood institutions, especially in rural areas of the parish, are unskilled,” she said. “As such they find it hard to pay the school fees and in general to take care of their children.”

Haughton, who works along with colleagues Lorna Vincent and Portia Downie, said the mothers will attend training sessions at the Catherine Hall Basic School in Montego Bay, where they will be taught the essentials of cake baking and decorating, basket weaving, cushion making, embroidery and backyard farming over the duration of the programme.

Resource persons will be drawn from agencies such as the Jamaica 4-H and the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA) as well as corporate Jamaica.

“We will also teach them parenting skills, how to look after their children properly and how to assist their children with homework,” explained Downie.

The programme comprises a series of continuous workshops where the parents will learn the skills and then practice at home. Come March 19 they will also be expected to display their creations at the 4-H Achievement Day, at the Irwin Primary School.

“We are trying to teach them self-reliance,” explained Vincent. “Unfortunately most of them are at home and not earning.” There has been enthusiasm on the part of the parents who according to Downie has been sponsored by the respective basic schools that their child/children attend.

“They come out because they know it is practical and they can learn something,” noted Downie.