STUDENTS for Transformation (SFT), an affiliate of the National Transformation Programme (NTP), has devised a work plan for transformational activities in schools, through their student leaders, for the new academic year.

This was announced by the NTP’s director of development, planning and monitoring, Fabian Brown, on September 2, during the Jamaica Information Service weekly Think Tank session, at its head office in Kingston.

Focus will be on high schools for the first year, starting with 18 schools in Kingston, St Thomas, St Catherine and St Ann.

The plan was conceptualised during a recent Student Leaders Workshop at Jamaica House, at which the SFT, which comprises a group of student leaders from Corporate Area secondary schools, sought to create a smooth transition between outgoing and incoming student leaders.

SFT’s vice-chairman and outgoing head boy of St George’s College, Jason Curate, said the workshop also produced a cohesion of ideas, aims and objectives that will become the basis of its work plan for the new school year.

Brown said that a component of the plan will be a poster competition, which sets out to ensure that students are aware, and have bought into the principles of national transformation and its core values.

“The poster competition that they are going to be embarking on in the various schools, will be about the students expressing, visually, how they see national core values and the national image and the first class status, and what a first class community should look like. It is felt that once that is done, you start getting the buy-in,” he said.

Transformational workshops are also to be held in line with the ongoing student leadership education programmes of the National Secondary Student Council and prefect bodies.

“One of the things that Students for Transformation is trying to do is to infuse into training, the principles of transformation so that, at the end of the day, you are really talking about a model student in truth,” Brown noted.

He also stated that SFT was looking at establishing an Honour Roll, through which students can be recognised for their transformational approach to life, and the way they may be living now.

Though the focus will be on high schools, some tertiary institutions, namely Northern Caribbean University and Portmore Community College, have already expressed interest in the work plan.

“One of the interesting things is the fact that you have outgoing student leadership now going into the tertiary institutions, (and) they are going to be able to try and spearhead the initiation in that area,” he added.

The National Transformation Programme, branded ‘Fresh Start Jamaica’, is a non-partisan, moral, value-based programme, supported by socio-economic interventions, seeking to trigger a transformation process for all Jamaicans. It is a partnership of church, state, faith-based organisations, the private sector and civil society groups.

The NTP’s focus is on moral, social and economic interventions and the inculcating of values and attitudes necessary for individual propensity, community development and the sustainable growth of the economy.