Social Development Commission is 80 years old this year. Its original name was Jamaica Welfare, and then it changed to Jamaica Social Welfare Commission. As of 1965 the name was changed to Social Development Commission.

Social development and community outreach in Jamaica really began with the churches, especially in the immediate years after slavery was abolished. And the development done by the church was in the areas of health, education and community outreach.One can think of the Baptist Free Villages, which might really be one of the first types of co-operative ever developed in Jamaica. Marcus Garvey would also promote the principle of co-operatives. The members of the Universal Negro Improvement Association were encouraged to join the people’s co-operative banks.But things came to a head in the late 1930s. From the days of slavery and before, Jamaica has basically been an agricultural economy. Bananas were introduced to supplement the loss of income as a result of the understandably changing attitude to working on the sugar estates after slavery was abolished.Banana disease had killed much of the crop in the 1930s. The people flocked the towns while the big banana growers recuperated. They would get another species of the banana to be planted but the workers still would not budge. They preferred to ‘hustle’ in urban areas rather than go back to what seemed like slavery.At the time, Norman Washington Manley was the lawyer for the Jamaica Banana Producers Association. He contacted the owner of United Fruit Company, Sam Zemurray, about the possibility of having a fund for banana workers.The result was a system where each bunch of bananas placed in United Fruit Company boats would bring one penny into the fund, which was named Jamaica Welfare. Norman Manley, who was the founder, was chairman of Jamaica Welfare for the first 10 years of its existence.During the time of Norman Manley’s chairmanship the name was expanded to the Jamaica Social Welfare Commission as it became a part of a government entity. During the Second World War, the Welfare Commission was used to collect ground provisions and canned Jamaican food for the war effort.How many people know the role played by Jamaican ground provisions in the victory of Britain and allies in the Second World War? To me, this is as much a part of the history of Jamaica’s contribution to the Second World War as the amount of soldiers sent from Jamaica to fight in that war.Apparently Germany and its allies got wind of the fact that food from Britain and allies was coming from Jamaica. So the boats carrying ground provisions form Jamaica were sunk in the Pacific Ocean. The British countered this by bombing the banana boats. And Jamaica’s first airport on the Palisadoes peninsula was built to refuel the war planes for that effort.But Jamaica Welfare, even before it became a commission of the colonial government during the Second World War, had already made a great impact on the Jamaican society. That impact was not only needed, but had never been done in such a magnitude before. And it was all done initially to prevent the rural urban drift so that the bananas would be planted.The each-one-teach-one literacy programme developed into at least one class per parish before it was expanded by the Michael Manley-led Government in 1972. It is important to remember that the initial concept came from Jamaica Welfare (Social Development Commission as of 1965).There was self-help housing, where the Baptist Free Village principle of helping each other build their house and giving everyone a day to help them on their land holdings to help each other plant or reap, was pursued.There was the development of Jamaican cultural entertainment. A sociologist from England was hired to go out into the rural villages and record on an old, primitive, large reel tape recorder the folk songs of Jamaica. This was the forerunner to the work that Olive Lewin did in the 1960s.In the earlier period, with Jamaica Welfare, Harry Belafonte was hired to record a few songs like

Jamaica Farewell and the

Banana Boat Song to boost Jamaica’s then fledgling tourism product.The promotion of Jamaican cooking was also done as a part of teaching individuals culinary arts. Skills training would be apart of the Jamaica Social Welfare Commission as of 1955 when Norman Manley became chief minister.Cobbla Youth Camp in Manchester was set up to train boys initially in skills. Other institutions were eventually set up, including one youth camp (Cape Clear in St Mary) for girls. But, more importantly, one cannot underscore the role of Jamaica Welfare in the promotion of co-operatives.Every three decades or so there is usually a renewal of sorts for all kinds of groups in our society. Will there be ferment for empowerment among the younger generation, or will they be texting? Have our young people been sufficiently distracted so that they do not know what is happening?Will students in our high schools and universities be focused enough to fight for change? Will they ever be focused enough to get involved or to take on religion of any sort? Does it all go back to the smartphones and other computerised machinery?Is there a calculated plan to distract the young people so that they will not fight for change? Is this how slavery was able to re-enter the world under the euphemism of human trafficking? Is this why they have been able to hypnotise young people into a form of ‘boasy’ slavery? Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Are our young people texting while the world disintegrates?There was a time when people had to fight for what they wanted. Indeed, it has been said that one difference between the way the United States of America got their political independence in 1776 and the way that Jamaica got its own 186 years later in 1962 is that the USA took their political independence, while Jamaica received hers on a silver platter. 

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