$300+ million pumped into JSIF’s alternative skills programme
Social Services Manager at the Jamaica
Social Investment Fund (JSIF), Gresford Bennett, says the entity has pumped
more than $300 million into its Alternative Livelihood Skills Development
Programme (ALSDP), which channels social interventions for unattached youth.
The ALSDP targets close to 6,000 youth in
18 underserved communities across seven parishes, and provides training in
different areas, including event production, film, and digital animation.
They are drawn from St. Ann, Clarendon, St.
James, Westmoreland, Kingston and St. Andrew, and St. Catherine.
The initiative is a component of the World
Bank-funded Integrated Community Development Project (ICDP), which runs from
2014 to 2020.
The latest engagement to be initiated under
the ALSDP is the Event Production Skills Training Programme, which was
implemented by JSIF in partnership with the M-Academy, the training institute
of the Main Event Entertainment Group, at a cost of $21 million.
The second cohort of 32 participants, from
Western Jamaica, were presented with their certificates during a graduation
ceremony at the Grandiosa Hotel in Montego Bay, St. James, on Monday (December
16).
Speaking at the ceremony, Bennett noted
that the ALSDP is designed to create opportunities for meaningful employment
for young people.
“The objective is to rapidly move young
people from the corner of their homes to a training facility and to actually
earn money,” he stated.
Bennett said the ALSDP is distinctly
different from other training programmes in that it is structured to meet the
needs of unattached youth in the 18 targeted underserved communities.
“You might ask why we would do a programme
like this, given the existence of a national training agency? The answer lies
in what we saw in 18 communities across seven parishes that the Integrated
Community Development Programme was mandated to operate in – several young
people with various levels of education and sometimes multiple engagement with
various training programmes,” Bennett contended.
He added that JSIF found young people whom
he described as “professional trainees”.
“[Due to] the stipend [involved], they try
to attach themselves to a number of training programmes… and it just seemed as
though the training [programmes were] becoming an occupation. We wanted to
change that [hence the advent of the ALSDP],” Bennett said.
Some 106 young people from 18 inner-city communities across Jamaica have now benefited from the Event Production Skills Training Programme, since the initiative’s introduction in April 2019.
— JIS
