Top scorer in the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce-sponsored Youth Leadership Training Course, Mertella Brown, (seated) examines a document while Sameer Younis (right), chairman of the Inner-City Development Committee looks on, at the graduation ceremony last Friday at the Chamber's headquarters in Kingston. - Michael Sloley /Freelance Photographer A BETTER ordered society will spur genuine community renewal and allow for stronger partnerships between the Government and a pro-active Jamaica, Minister of Local Government, Community Development and Sport, Portia Simpson Miller said.
"As a society, we have taken too long to fully accept that genuine community renewal comes from strong working partnerships," Minister Simpson Miller stated last Friday. She was speaking to the recent graduates of the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce (JCC) Inner-City Development Committee's (IDC) Youth Leadership Training Course in Kingston.
"The Ministry is not a welfare agency," she continued. "It is a facilitator of social development, it seeks to promote human development by helping communities to help themselves. We must always draw on the energies and skills of the Jamaican communities."
In order to grease the wheels of these partnership, Minister Simpson Miller asserted that "the image of the Local Government Ministry must undergo a change", pledging to oversee "ongoing reform" of general and financial management, human resources and "stronger accountability" across the board.
She also urged Jamaicans to play their part.
"Partnership and reform need order," she said. "A culture of order must replace disorder at every level of this society."
The training course is designed to assist young people in shaping and improving their communities and their own lives. Drawn from 10 inner-city areas of Kingston and St. Andrew and the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), over 800 young people have already benefitted from the JCC-led initiative which covers conflict resolution, family values, small business management and community leadership.
The 45-hour course costs are estimated at $10,000 per student, but the participants are only required to pay $100. This year, although there were no JCF participants due to election duties, 35 young people from the Corporate Area took part at the Institute of Management Sciences (IMS) in Kingston between September 30 and November 4, with 28 achieving success in all modules.
Top of the class for the men was Tivoli Gardens' resident Leon Scarlett, who achieved a score of 91 per cent, while Mertella Brown topped the women with 93 per cent.
Chairman of the IDC, Sameer Younis, emphasised the importance of the programme's module on family values in his congratulatory remarks, blaming "the problems with our criminal elements and violence" on a "lack of family values" rather than the often-blamed poverty that afflicts most of Jamaica's inner-city areas.
Explaining the motives behind the scheme, Acting JCC Executive Director Trevor Fearon, stressed the necessity for sustained training to allow economic growth.
"The better trained our people are, the better we do as an economy," he said.
"Training is the most important solution to the challenges of development, poverty and improving productivity," Executive Director of IMS, Winston Adams, told the graduates. It was a sentiment energetically supported by Minister Simpson Miller, who told those in attendance that training is an essential and ongoing process.
"This graduation ceremony must not signify the end of studying and learning; rather it should signal the beginning of real learning," she said.
