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