Our Final Day in Kingston

Two years ago, Everton and I sat down to plan this fellowship.

We saw that more and more of our students were experiencing crime and violence in their communities due to the struggling economy. We saw that our students were having more difficulties in their school work because of the increasing distractions in their communities. We saw the need to learn from what others are doing to reduce crime and violence and to increase youth involvement in these efforts.

We came to Jamaica to learn what is happening in the communities, and we are leaving Jamaica with so much. We have seen the power in the people here, we have seen grassroots organizations that work to sustain themselves, and we have met amazing individuals who make a difference in their communities.

We spent our final day together at UWI wrapping up our project, and setting up some plans for next summer.

This is what we hope to do.

In our immediate plan, we want to raise some funds to buy school supplies for Miss Pet/Miss Cookie's afterschool program. School begins in two weeks, and there is tension in Jamaica. School is not free for the children in Jamaica. Parents are struggling to send their children to school, to pay for the utilities in the school, to buy uniforms, supplies and textbooks in a terrible economy.

The children will be returning to school during the day, and will continue to go to the community groups in the afternoons and on the weekends.

Crime Youth Watch Jamaica works with the groups to develop self-sustainability through enterprise. Knife's students at UWI have developed a business plan for the McIntyre Villa Community Center. But...in the meantime, we want to give the children in the group a strong start to the school year.

In the longterm, we hope that we can gather a group of our colleagues in the areas of math, science, special education, English and the arts to come back to Jamaica next summer to do two things: train and teach.

Everton and I have both heard about the challenges in Jamaica's classrooms from both teachers and students, and we see that there is a need for different types of professional development for the teachers.

As teachers who have worked in NYC's alternative school settings, we can return to train the teachers and faciliators in Jamaica who are trained in a more traditional sense to work with all different kinds of learners.

In addition, this group of teachers will volunteer in the youth groups. Ideally, we would set up training sessions for the adults in the different subject areas while we run simultaneous sessions in the youth groups.

As an American, I knew very little about Jamaica beyond what is presented in the media. I knew of the beaches, the music, the dance, the jerk chicken, Bob Marley, and of course, the negative coverage of the crime and poverty. Lately, the coverage of Kingston has been terrible. But...what I have seen has been amazing.

As a Jamaican, Everton saw that he needed to return to his homeland to reconnect, to see what has been happening. He has said time and time again that there is something special about this generation, there is so much happening now, everyday people are doing so much on the grassroots level.

We both came to Jamaica as learners. We hope to come back next year to do more.