The Grace & Staff Community Development Foundation has been recognised by the South-South Crime Prevention Project for its work in inner-city communities.  The Foundation is being featured on the South-South website along with other independently evaluated best practice projects from Southern Africa and the Caribbean.

Grace & Staff activities were reviewed under the category ‘Violence Prevention’.  According to the information posted on the website, Grace & Staff’s activities “serve to make the community more organised and more accepting of social order, violence reduction and peace building initiatives. From a crime control perspective, the social intervention programmes may be seen as diversionary. They provide young people, especially teenage males, with alternate after-school activities that are highly structured and supervised by responsible adults.”

Frances Madden, General Manager of Grace & Staff Community Development Foundation (left) and Counsellor, Curtis Sweeney (right) in discussion with students during a recent event at the Learning Institute of Central Kingston (LICK), one of the Homework Centres supported by the Foundation.

Grace & Staff Community Development Foundation was established in 1979, as a joint project between GraceKennedy’s management and staff in response to the social and economic conditions existing in inner city communities. Over the years the Foundation has contributed to community programmes involving young people and the indigent; and has developed models of community empowerment which have been emulated by other organisations in Jamaica in the private and donor sector.

The South-South Crime Prevention Project was developed as a mechanism through which lessons learnt and ideas on crime prevention could be exchanged between policy makers and practitioners in the developing world. It is a joint project of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime; United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs; the UN-Habitat Safer Cities Programme, Southern Africa Regional Office; The University of the West Indies, and the Institute of Criminology, University of Cape Town.

The site may be viewed at http://www.southsouthcrime.org/Projects/vp caribbean.asp

Posted: April 20, 2007