BY DIANA MCINTYRE-PIKE

THE continuous deterioration of Jamaica in all aspects of life has been a concern to many of us who love our country and want to make it a success. I grew up in a country that focused on love, caring and sharing with each other. There was also respect for the country, family life, the elderly, the youth, the church and the leaders of the country.

As a dedicated and committed Jamaican, I have asked for God’s continuous guidance on how we can make Jamaica a place where the people of Jamaica could realise their true potential with God as their partner instead of greed, power, money, violence, crime, and drugs.

God has blessed us with a beautiful country with the most talented people and natural, cultural and heritage resources. We need to give thanks to God for this ‘gift’ and the honour of living in a country with so much potential. We are struggling because we have forgotten that He is our Master. We cannot continue to allow the masters of criminal activity to destroy our country. We must stand up and be strong with confidence that we can overcome all difficulties with God’s guidance that will strengthen us.

We need a spiritual revival, where as a family, we should pray together — ‘the family that prays together, stays together’! As a Jamaican family, we are not praying together. Instead, we are surrounded by despondency especially from the youth, many of whom have given up hope and have developed a negative attitude towards Jamaica. When the youth of the country sees no future, this is a sure sign that we have a national crisis.

If we do not help the people of our country to know how to become more productive and self-sufficient, the end result is that they will be influenced by others like criminals, drug barons and the ‘posses’ who are all over the country guiding the youth how to achieve success their way – we cannot allow them to win.

The recent criminal activities should not be dealt with only from a security point of view. We should give support to the many community-based initiatives and existing projects throughout the country to enable them to attract local and international investment/equity financing as well as grant funding. For example, through community tourism, communities are encouraged to develop their communities as businesses and this way, they are able to access more funding support. The focus is to formally recognise and strengthen community initiatives and partnership on the ground and building community capacity and structuring broad-based participation and development.

A national meeting is required for all community organisations and groups to meet and exchange ideas and to establish a database of viable community business projects which would be shared with potential investors especially from the Jamaican Diaspora — many of whom are interested in getting to know what the requirements are for community businesses.

Tourism is the fastest foreign currency earner in Jamaica and can assist in alleviating economic stress throughout the island if we have more ‘responsible’ tourism projects and support. For example, Sandals Foundation should be commended for the outstanding support that they are giving community projects and for designing a programme where their guests are encouraged to visit the community schools as an outreach to read to the children and to improve the schools. Other tourism players are doing their part to embrace community projects. The dollar devaluation will increase costs throughout the country which will result in a negative effect on the livelihood of many of our citizens. Therefore, it is imperative that we train communities as entrepreneurs to develop export industries within their own environment and with the support of both the public and private sectors, market their products and services locally and internationally.

We need to be committed to this ‘spiritual revival’ in Jamaica to save our country’s image and to encourage communities to become entrepreneurs within their own environment with the training, business development and marketing support. The youth are becoming restless and anxious to earn money and many have decided to ‘harrass’ ‘hustle’ and become criminals.

Jamaicans, please do not give up hope. We cannot allow the masters of criminal, drug and violent activity to win. Let us humbly ask God’s guidance to take charge of our country and lead us to Him.

Diana McIntyre-Pike, OD is president/founder, Countrystyle Community Tourism Network/Villages as Businesses, Mandeville, Manchester.

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