Majesty Gardens youth given chance to upgrade skills

Twenty-four year old Ezerica Fowler was forced to drop out of high school in the ninth grade when she became pregnant, but thanks to the introduction of an Out of School Youths (OSY) programme in her Majesty Gardens community two months ago, she now feels empowered to go after her dreams of becoming a make-up artist.

The mother of three is but one of 30 youths in the area who have been given a chance to upgrade their skills through the initiative, which is co-ordinated by the HIV/STI prevention arm of the South East Regional Health Authority (SERHA).

For the past two months, these school dropouts have been meeting at the Majesty Gardens Covenant Community Church in the area to receive basic training in barbering, cosmetology, electrical work, music, numeracy, and literacy.
"We have been finding it very interesting, because a lot of young girls down here who didn't get to finish school can continue to do so," said Fowler.

"Most of the young boys who normally like smoking during the day -- you know those that smoke hard -- this programme here keeps them from 10:00 in the morning to 4:00 in the evening. This kind of life makes them take time out for themselves and learn something, because most of the young boys down here, they just don't go to school. But this programme here in the community makes them come here and end up learning things," she said.

Twenty-three-year-old Ralston Smith, who also benefits from the programme, agrees that it helps to keep young men, like himself, occupied daily. The Haile Selassie High past student wants to be a musical engineer, although he has a HEART/Trust NTA level one certificate in cabinet making.
"It's interesting, because it taught me a lot of things that I didn't know and refreshed my brain about a lot of things like the maths, English, music, electrical work, and barbering," he said.

"The programme has a nice impact on the community because it brings forth a lot of things that certain youths do not know and upgrades your knowledge so that you can go to HEART/Trust NTA and better yourself," he added.

Regional Behaviour Change Co-ordinator at SERHA Andrea Campbell explained that out-of-school youths were targeted for this initiative because these individuals are often unemployed and unattached, and are therefore most likely to engage in risky sexual behaviours. As such, a life skills component is also added to the curriculum, which is aimed at empowering these individuals to develop new attitudes, behaviours and choices. Students are taught about structuring resumes and how to do job interviews, among other things, during this session.

"This is one of the strategies that we utilise in our targeted community intervention. So the strategy is to particularly target out-of-school youths in offering them skills building as a part of empowering them, and thereby reducing their risk of becoming infected with HIV. So through the empowerment, persons would now have a skill, so their earning power goes up. With the increase of the earning power, there is hope that they would be better able to negotiate condom use if and when in a relationship," she explained.

The OSY programme has been replicated in several communities. Three of these communities are in Kingston, another three in St Catherine, and three in St Thomas. Although the programme generally lasts for three months, financial constraints resulted in the organisers having to carry it out in Majesty Gardens for just two months. The last class was held for the batch of students in this community last month and ended with an evaluation session.
"A component of this programme is that, at the end, HEART Trust would come in and do an assessment and they would certify them to whatever level they are," Campbell said.