Mark Beckford, Gleaner Writer"People in the ghetto have potential, they want change, it is just the opportunity."
These were the words of Annette Waul, a 41-year-old resident of Matthews Lane in Kingston who participated in a job-screening and career-placement workshop at the Courtleigh Hotel in St. Andrew on the weekend.
The workshop was put on by the Community Security Initiative.
Waul, beaming with enthusiasm, told The Gleaner that she was now a more rounded individual as a result of the training workshop. Now she's not only street-smart, but job-smart as well.
At the same time, she bemoaned the struggles her colleagues face daily in search of jobs to provide for their families because of discrimination against persons from the inner city.
"Some places that you go, people will not want to hire you once they realise where you are from, and if you do go somewhere, they do not expect much from you," she said.
Waul wants programmes like these to flourish in Jamaica. "My word of encouragement would be to just go into the ghettos and take out people who want good and work with them, and those who don't want good will eventually have interest."
Patricia Balls, director of the Community Security Initiative, says the programme was specifically aimed at residents from several inner-city communities.
"The Government felt the need to do some remedial work in these communities through social intervention, and this job placement programme is part of our social intervention programme to help to place residents in jobs, especially those who have just left school and are sitting in the communities not doing anything," Balls noted.
The workshop, which taught interviewing skills, workplace behaviour and provided participants with tips on professionalism, was also given high marks by Nadine Poyser from Brown's Town, more popularly known as Dunkirk, in east Kingston.
"A lot of things I didn't know about interviews, the type of clothes to wear to an interview and what is expected from you in the workplace; I have now learnt," Poyser said.
