RISE Life Management could be forced to significantly scale back in assisting at-risk youth across the island as funding becomes increasingly hard to secure.

According to Executive Director Sonita Morin-Abrahams, the NGO is struggling with a $3 million to $5 million shortfall annually, on an operating budget of approximately $20 million.

“It is extremely difficult for us going forward,” chairman of RISE Life Gregory McClure commented at yesterday’s Jamaica Observer Monday Exchange at the newspaper’s Beechwood Avenue headquarters in Kingston.

“We are not talking about a massive need, but if we don’t have the $5 million we have to scale down,” McClure declared.

RISE Life Management’s dire financial situation is even more significant as the NGO’s activities have been assimilated into the Government’s social intervention and crime-fighting mechanism without consistent subvention from the State.

“We are performing many services that normally would be covered by Government,” Morin-Abrahams commented.

According to members of the NGO, referrals are routinely made by the Department of Probation and the Family Court for youngsters to either be tested for drugs or be included in the RISE Life programme. “The court asks for a report every month,” said Richard Henry, programme manager, addiction counselling and support services.

The NGO has also signed an MOU with the Department of Corrections to counsel youngsters incarcerated at the Metcalfe Street and Rio Cobre correctional facilities.

“Young men who have been caught by the police, primarily for ganja, are sent to us,” Henry said. In addition, Henry disclosed that Corporate Area schools regularly send suspect students to the NGO for substance-abuse testing.

“We are running up to 70 [drug] tests per month, funded by the National Health Fund (NHF). Without them we could not survive,” said Henry. The NHF assists with some $9 million annually to support drugs tests and other intervention, such as counselling in schools, Henry told the Monday Exchange.

He added, however, that other social programmes were under serious threat unless funding was earmarked.

The Citizens Security and Justice Programme (CSJP) administered through the Ministry of National Security is once such that could come to an end in months.

The CSJP is a community-based violence control intervention programme operating in Waterhouse, Tower Hill, Drewsland, Parade Gardens (Tel-Aviv and Southside), Fletcher’s Land and Allman Town since 2003.

“We have been told that is coming to an end in August,” Morin-Abrahams confirmed, adding that funding was not in place to continue the inner-city rejuvenation programme.

“We are not getting the type of public funding we need,” Morin-Abrahams commented, adding that corporate Jamaica is also lacking in its support for the organisation.

McClure outlined yesterday that RISE funding originated from three primary sources, one specifically for projects through international funding organisations or government agencies. The second was through an endowment fund, although “the returns were relatively small”, and the third from donations.

“Some of the work we do are project-related, we have staff assigned to these projects. We have other projects that are not funded and we have to pay for that,” said McClure, who added that administrative costs were not typically borne by funding agencies.

Morin-Abrahams admitted that the NGO could have been more strident in soliciting funds from Government over the years and said that a renewed effort is now underway to lobby some ministries.

“Just recently I have written to seven ministries asking them to consider a subvention,” she said yesterday. “We have high expectations that they will come on board.”