PORUS, Manchester — For those who came of age after the 1960s the words “Jamaica Welfare Ltd” engraved on the cut-stone facade of the Porus Community Centre, in Central Manchester may not mean much.

However, the Jamaica Welfare Ltd was a critical component of modern community development in Jamaica as conceived by National Hero Norman Manley and other nationalists in the 1930s. Crucially, Jamaica Welfare was the forerunner of today’s Social Development Commission (SDC).

Built in 1939, the Porus Community Centre was once the second “hub for rural development”, facilitating the programmes of the Jamaica Welfare idea.

Beverly Boothe, Manchester Parish Manager for the SDC told the Jamaica Observer Central that the Jamaica Welfare Limited Community Centre in Porus is under the supervision of her organisation.

Though the Guy’s Hill Community Centre in St Catherine was built a year earlier, she argued that the facility in Porus is now the oldest community centre in the island as it is the one in its “purest” state.

Chairman of the Maintenance and Management Committee of the Jamaica Welfare Community Centre, a sub-committee of the Porus Development area, Egerton Patterson said that in previous years the centre was used for “schooling” and skills training such as home economics, art and craft, tailoring and dressmaking.

Now, he said, the activities there include holding meetings for sporting events, the Jamaica Agriculture Society (JAS) group in Porus, Porus Craft and Agricultural Association Special Authorised Society Limited (PCAASAS) (registered under the Co-operatives and Friendly Society Act) and engagements for the Porus District Association, which comes under the Social Development Commission and is made up of 27 communities.

There is an Early Childhood Institution on property and a computer lab for the community sponsored by the Universal Service Fund.

While Norman Manley’s roots are traced to the community of Roxborough in South Central Manchester, Porus in the West Central section also lays claim to important aspects of his early life. Patterson said that Manley’s mother Margaret Shearer had a grocery shop while he was a boy on Main Street, Porus, in close proximity to where the community centre was later built.

Manley is said to have been christened at the Porus Methodist Church and there is a plaque there in his honour.

The community centre, Patterson said, was also at one time named the Norman Manley Skills Training Centre.