Jarmila Jackson, Features Writer

Elvery Nicholson (foreground) instructs students in the computer laboratory. - photos by Junior Dowie/Staff Photographer

IN CENTRAL KINGSTON, on a street characterised by speeding buses and loiterers on every corner, sits an institution with a commitment to uplifting the surrounding communities through education and 'social re-engineering'.

Despite having been established for five years, the Hanover Street community-based Vocational Training Centre, a joint project of the HEART/National Training Institute and the Social Development Commission, has, only in the last year, taken steps to go into the surrounding communities to encourage residents face to face to take their education seriously.

"We walked into the com-munities, targeting parents in their homes, and people standing on the corner. A lot of Jamaicans don't bother to read, so we prefer to do it face to face", relates centre manager Leonard Cowan. The centre offers certification in early childhood education, secretarial and accounting skills, as well as data operations and computer repairs.

Constant struggle

Cowan

While also facilitating students from as far away as St Thomas, Portmore and Old Harbour, the centre is situated in a place with an underbelly of violence. For Cowan, it has been a constant struggle keeping students in school and off the streets. Quite frequently, violence erupts in the area, which is surrounded by communities such as Tel Aviv, Southside, Spoilers Corner, Fletcher's Land, Kingston Gardens and Allman Town. The result is that parents, and sometimes even the students, will pull themselves out of school for fear of violent encounters. "These are real fears they have," says Cowan.

Although there is much to discourage its continuation, the Vocational Training Centre is committed to making its services available to those interested, regardless of the fact that this number has been on the decline. The centre manager discloses that while the minimum requirement for entry into the courses is two CXC subjects, there are many who enter the programmes with as many as seven subjects. Although qualified, they simply cannot afford to attend university.

During the summer, the centre reaches out to the children of the various communities as a means of social re-engineering aimed at unifying them through common activities. "The place is very divided at the moment, and even though the children are resistant at the beginning, by the end of the summer programme, they are unified," reports Cowan. >