The Cokes View Primary School in Westmoreland last week opened a peace garden on its campus with a view to aiding conflict resolution.

“We need to log on to the Peace Garden, announce it to all the schools that we need this quiet space. This is proactive, so I am committed to telling other stakeholders and the education minister about it,” said Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) spokesman on education, Senator Basil Waite.

Waite, who gave the keynote address at the event, said that since the ratio of guidance counsellors to students in schools is 1:350, the need for concepts like the garden was critical.

The ceremony was attended by a large contingent of parents, teachers, students, principals from neighbouring schools, education official, Rotarians, politicians, members of RADA, JAS, the Forestry Department, 4H Club, SDC, National Council for Youth Development, the Jamaica Constabulary Force, and the Rotary Club of Savanna-la-Mar (RCS), the initiative’s main sponsor. In all, over twenty-one individuals and organisations contributed to the project.

According to Principal of Cokes View Joyce Green, after whom the project is named, the initiative came from a peace and conflict resolution project put on by the Rotary Clubs of Savanna-la-Mar and Indianapolis USA, through their Peace Learning Centre.

“Through that project, which began in 2007, we trained fifteen educators from five schools in the parish who are now certified Peace Officers, but it was on a follow-up visit to Indianapolis that I observed their Peace Garden concept and adopted it,” said Green, who is a past president of RCS.

“Construction of the garden began in 2009, and since then Prime Minister Bruce Golding has visited, given his blessings and promised to return,” she added.

Situated along the front fence of the premises and planted with trees, flowers and a lawn dissected by a gravelled walkway ending in three directions with tables and benches, the peace garden also houses a water fountain that was officially turned on by RCS past president, Douglas Arnold JP.

The concept is to use the serenity of the garden as therapy during counselling sessions with persons who have difficulty coping with established required standards of discipline.

“The establishment of the programme of conflict management called PALS (Peace and Love in Schools) has done much to assist in the reduction of self-defeating, antisocial behaviours that militate against effective teaching and learning,” noted former Minister of State in the Ministry of Education Reverend Noel Monteith. “Cokes View has taken the initiative to take the PALS project further; outside the four walls of the school – to a lovely garden and to Nature.”

“The Joyce Green Peace Garden, fittingly named to honour our hard-working, soon-to-retire principal, is available to the community at large and if it works, it will help create less work for the police,” revealed Board Chairman Attorney-at-law Michael Erskine.

Inspector Ralph Medley of the Whithorn Police agreed, urging the community to work with the initiative.

Other speakers were President of RCS Kenneth Banhan; Councillor Bernard Vanreil of the Cornwall Mountain Division, who represented Westmoreland Central member of Parliament Roger Clarke; and Reverend Franklyn Beckford, territorial education officer of region 4, who represented Director Devon Ruddock. Russell Hammond, the Jamaica Labour Party caretaker for the constituency also attended.

“We will use the Peace Garden to become better citizens and to create a better society,” affirmed Head Girl Britney Brown, as she delivered the Vote of Thanks.