Jamaica

Please provide us with your views on the state of peace in the country you will represent at the One Young World Summit

Jamaica is a very peculiar country when it comes on to the state of peace. We are not directly threatened by violent extremism in the strictest sense of the term, but our violence is at times very extreme. The rate of crime has increased rather consistently over the past 20 years and we are seeing a worrying trend where not just the perpetrators of crime and violence, but the victims of these crimes are getting younger and younger with each passing lustrum. Peace usually means an agreement by criminals to ease tension for a short time, and not a real transformational process that sees the factors to criminal production halted and reversed. This is caused primarily due to a lack of resource as well as a history of political corruption and societal indifference, and support of criminal elements. The result is a situation where a large number of our criminals reoffend and over 50% of violent crimes are committed by youths younger than 25.

How do you think your work and/or activism contribute to countering violent extremism and a sustainable peace?

However, not all Jamaicans have sat by and watched criminals take over our country. Many, like myself, have actively gotten up to pull the country out of this mire of crime and violence. My work has focused on the youth in my society, the ones who are not only the perpetrators and victims of crime, but with a little guidance from other positive young people, the growing solution to the problem as well. I first started my work with youth who were defined by society as “unattached” (though I dislike that monier very much). I started the Youth Empowerment Seminars with a few positive minded youth from the University of the West Indies and we ventured into troubled high schools and juvenile facilities across several parishes of the island to offer mentorship and academic and social readjustment to hundreds of youth. Some of these youths at age 16 have already been charged with a variety of serious crimes including wounding, burglary and even murder. Our job was to show them that they are not in fact “unattached”. That they are people who genuinely care and believe in their potential to be not just good citizens, but great people. Prior to that program I was invited by the HOPE project under the office of the Prime Minister to chair an island wide mentorship scheme to target the over 10,000 “unattached” youth said to be in the country. We trained scores of youth mentors and assigned them to mentees who were placed by the government in various jobs across the country. I have also been active as a tutor and supervised a reading camp for youth who struggle with reading for two years. Those are just a few of the initiatives I have been involved with but the idea is that with good mentorship and academic guidance, we will be able to pull these youth further away from the cliff of criminality.