SECURITY Minister Peter Bunting will lead a forum of participants from over 20 at-risk communities in Western Jamaica, in a series of workshops targeting communities, faith-based organisations and schools.

The forum will be part of his ministry’s Western Jamaica Unite For Change Social Intervention Forum and Expo, tomorrow at the Montego Bay Community College in St James.

The target groups will, in these workshops, develop a model for social intervention to be implemented in at least two pilot communities across the region.

In a release to the media, Bunting said the main feature of this approach is that it will not be the usual top-down approach, where the authorities design and direct communities where these programmes are most needed.

“This Unite For Change approach encourages and facilitates an inclusive approach where communities will themselves develop, implement and own their interruption programmes. The interventions are broad-based, and not all directly linked to violence prevention, but every intervention has the potential to significantly reduce incidents of violence as they focus on behaviour change,” the release said.

It is anticipated that residents from communities within the greater Montego Bay area, St James, Trelawny and Hanover will attend and discuss how citizens plan to give sustained focus to changing their communities for better.