Project director of Project STAR Saffery Brown says the programme has been steadily transforming the lives of citizens in some of the most vulnerable communities in Jamaica by engaging them in personal and professional development activities as well as skills training.

Speaking at a digital press briefing to provide an update on the social and economic development initiative, created by the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) in partnership with the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), Brown gave an example of the positive impact by singling out a young man by the name of Ackeem, from the community of Rose Gardens in downtown Kingston, who was practically sitting around doing nothing before the programme.

“He was somebody who was falling through the cracks. Ackeem came to our first employment training and got really involved. He wasn’t working for a few weeks after the programme and Ackeem came out and volunteered every day and supported the training.

“We had an event on Monday night called suited for success where we brought a number of young men together from the community to talk about how they get properly attired for work and Ackeem gave a motivational speech about really developing themselves. Prior to this, Ackeem was just wandering the community not causing any trouble, but look at the contribution he is now making. One person is making one massive contribution. If we can find all those people who are not necessarily causing trouble but are falling through the cracks, then we may not have such an issue with human capital in Jamaica if we can really pull them out,” she said at a press conference at the office of the police commissioner in St Andrew.

The aim of the project is to bring about societal transformation through targeted interventions in under-resourced areas of Jamaica.

Project STAR, which has a $2-billion funding target, is currently focused on communities across Jamaica including in downtown Kingston as well as in Savanna-La-Mar in Westmoreland. It helps unattached youth in volatile communities with employment and life skills training.

Brown further pointed out that the programme also promotes financial inclusion. The reason for this, according to Brown, is to ensure that skilled young people don’t take their families and move out of the communities because of a lack of a development and earning.

“Let us say you live in a community on Spanish Town Road, you are a father and have two sons that are age seven and nine. On Saturday afternoon at 2 pm, they say they want to go do something. If you don’t have money, where are you going to take the kids? You need to have facilities and activities. You cannot expect families to thrive in an ecosystem where they are not provided any resources. Financial inclusion is a step to making sure that the whole of a wider community is progressing and at the same time you are impacting individuals. A big part of what we are trying to do is make sure that they themselves are positioned to access the economic pathways that open up for them. Very often you will see that there is an economic pathway but it is not opened to them wide. They don’t have a birth certificate, Tax Registration Number, basic documentation and they can’t get a job because they don’t have a food handler’s certificate.”

Keith Duncan, co-chairman of project STAR, said that socio-economic transformation of communities is crucial for economic transformation. According to Duncan, there are more than 700 squatter communities across Jamaica that need to be targeted.

“If people don’t know how to access jobs, that is a social outcome that drives crime and violence. Crime costs Jamaica $100 billion a year,” he said, adding that there are around 500,000 people who are not a part of the workforce due to a number of factors.