MONTEGO BAY, St James — Eight communities in western Jamaica are set to benefit, as of next month, from a $2-billion social intervention programme, dubbed Project Star, being spearheaded by the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ).

Those to benefit are Mount Salem, Albion, Rose Heights, Paradise, and Bogue in St James, as well as Grange Hill in Savanna-la-Mar and a section of Negril, both in Westmoreland.

Project Star, which is scheduled to run for five years, will see the PSOJ partnering with the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), among other State and private entities, to replicate a social intervention programme which the St James police had launched in Salt Spring a few years ago, said PSOJ President Keith Duncan.

“…That was the beginning of an experiment that has worked well in terms of social transformation of a community — the partnership with the Jamaica Constabulary Force, the business community, and the community to start a transition of the Salt Spring community,” Duncan said during a media briefing in Salt Spring on Wednesday.

“This model has evolved into Project Star and we are going to be working with about 10 to 20 communities — but we are going to be adding some frills to it. We are going to be adding the job creation component where we are creating jobs for individuals who are trained [and] prepared. There are many Jamaicans who are sitting in these communities that just don’t know how it is they are going to access jobs,” Duncan shared.

Project Star will also seek to formalise micro businesses in these selected communities, Duncan told journalists.

“We are going to work with the small businesses in these communities and get them formalised, get them into the banking sector to open their accounts so that they can build their credit history. [This will] help to build their cash flow so that they can borrow money and build their business.”

The programme will require the hands and hearts of social practitioners, across the various institutions and inside the target communities, to join in on the PSOJ’s vision of promoting a sense of unity and development, Duncan explained.

“We are going to be working with the social practitioners that do such a good job in Jamaica — the Ministry of Education, those NGOs, the Jamaica Social Investment Fund, the HEART Trust/NSTA and other institutions,” the PSOJ president said.

“We are going to want volunteers, business mentors and teachers to come teach at the homework centre,” he added.

In highlighting the blueprint for Project Star, PSOJ Vice-President John Byles said the organisation is looking forward to working with at-risk communities across the country.

“Seeing the dramatic changes was when we actually looked at it and said to the PSOJ, and Keith in particular, ‘This is not something that we want to just take in an insular way. This needs to be looked at and scaled.’ We are excited [about] what is to come because it is the scaling of social interventions like this that are really going to make the difference in making a better Jamaica,” reasoned Byles.

Principal of Salt Spring Primary School Norma Brydson pointed out that a breakfast programme implemented by the St James police, led by Senior Superintendent Vernon Ellis, has greatly benefited the productivity of her students.

“Before the breakfast programme the attendance was low and punctuality was an issue. We would have… children not coming because of lunch money [but] then attendance improved — and I attribute that mostly to the breakfast programme by the JCF,” Brydson said.

For his part, Ellis noted that a major driver in the success of the social intervention programme in Salt Spring was the “resocialisation between the citizens and the police”.

“What we saw from this programme is that both the police and citizens got to see a human side of each other. We were better able to relate to each other so it looked like a resocialisation between the citizens and the police. We cannot arrest our way out of the problems … sometimes it needs a multi-agency approach,” he argued.