- File
Children in the community of Flankers, St. James, can look forward to a brighter future through the Peace and Justice Centre.
ON MORNING Dew Drive in Flankers, the weather vane has swung.
Where community members once woke up each day to escalating tensions, with the rest of the nation pointing fingers everywhere, peace now reigns.
Morning Dew Drive in the Montego Bay community is the site of the Flankers Peace and Justice Centre, so named for its function of providing an avenue for dispute resolution.
Marilyn McIntosh-Nash, administrator of the Flankers Peace and Justice Centre and president of the Flankers Community Development Committee (CDC a coalition of more than 18 community-based organisation in Flankers) states that the Peace and Justice Centre provides an avenue for community mediators to offer their services to residents who are in conflict.
Conflict resolution
This centre also serves as a resource bank with reading materials and computer facilities to allow access to information on conflict resolution, she said.
Flankers has come a long way. The fishing village and low income residential community has had a history of violent conflict. The process of changing this perception rooted in real life incidents has been a long one. In this, the Peace Centre has played a critical role.
Another step in changing the image of the community was made recently, when leaders within the Flankers community were presented with certificates in public relations. This followed their recent training in the art of publicity, involving completion of a one-day workshop in media and publicity strategies.
The workshop was conceptualised and sponsored by Sandals Montego Bay and took place inside the resort. According to Sandal's public relations manager Marcia Bowen, the objective of the exercise was to impart the skills necessary to infiltrate the mass media, namely, print and electronic.
"Over 18 organisations within the Flankers community are conducting exemplary developmental work. Support from the mass media is not always possible. In such instances, organisation leaders need to know how to formulate their own messages for publication," she said.
Leaders who participated were from the Flankers Peace and Justice Centre, Flankers Citizens' Association, Flankers Mediators Association, Flankers Seventh-Day Adventist Church, Flankers Open Bible Church and the Flankers Community Development Committee.
Workshop
The one-day workshop covered the following areas: definition of the mass media, public relations and publicity; Jamaica's media houses; the tools of publicity; formulating publicity messages; what is news and what media houses look for and interacting with the media. The participants also gained practice writing a media advisory, a press release and a photo caption.
Community outreach programmes span conflict resolution, health, agriculture, education, sports and social development.
According to McIntosh Nash, the administrator of the Peace and Justice Centre, the mediators were trained by the Dispute Resolution Foundation (DRP) as a part of the CIDA. sponsored Social Conflict and Legal Reform Project (SCLRP).
The SCLRP project is a joint effort of the Governments of Jamaica and Canada, funded by the Canadian International Development Agency CIDA. Since the project began June 2001 over 160 mediators have been trained.
Ultimately, 200 mediators, administrators and facilitators in Flankers will be trained. The Peace and Justice Centre has burgeoned into a community hub where various activities take place, Mrs. McIntosh Nash pointed out.
"Here at Morning Dew Drive, we offer computer classes, GSAT classes, homework assistance and tutoring. Of course the primary function is mediation but we have expanded our capacity to offer these important services to the members of our community," she said.
Flankers is one of two communities which is being used as a pilot project for the conflict resolution project. The other community is Trench Town in Kingston. Loretta Reid-Pitt, Manager of the Dispute Resolution Foundation project, said that Flankers and Trench Town were chosen from a number of communities following numerous assessments. In implementing the project, residents from the communities undergo a period of training which enables them to manage conflicts on a professional level. When a conflict evolves in the community, it will be referred to the dispute resolution body who will then try to resolve the issue.
Two-fold
The project is two-fold in that it has two components, the legal institutions component and the community component, Mrs. Reid Pitt said. The legal institution component is working in partnership with the judiciary, the bar, court administration, the dispute resolution foundation mediators and other entities to improve the ability of Jamaicans to effectively resolve disputes through the judicial system in a more timely, less costly and more accessible manner.
The community component focuses on empowering the two pilot communities through the key stakeholders, Dispute Resolution Foundation and PALS Jamaica Limited, which will work with these communities to assist the residents in conflict management skills.
