Old Harbour group targets $750,000 to fight crime

The Old Harbour Minister’s Fraternal is among several entities and individuals to have tabled their cause with the NCB Foundation Grant Wish programme in hope of securing the top prize of three-quarter of a million dollars. The NCB Foundation this year has set aside a $15 million purse from which numerous groups or persons will receive cash prizes in various categories. Persons can vote up to three times a day which will be used to determine the beneficiaries.

Click here to vote for the Old Harbour Violence Interruption Programme. Participants can vote up to three times daily.

Nominations and voting close on December 5, 2021.

The minister’s fraternal for Old Harbour is guided by prominent faith-based leaders, who have embarked on a “violence interruption” strategy with the community of Old Harbour Bay being used as its pilot. But the covid-19 pandemic and subsequent continuous lockdowns forced them to shift focus on training approximately 100 members from different denominations on how to utilise various intervention models to maintain peace, order and neighbourliness.

“We have sent out letters to corporate Jamaica, individuals, churches and we have not gotten back any response to date,” bemoaned Randy Finnikin, programmes manager, Old Harbour Minister’s Fraternal. “So it is self-funded so we are moving at a snail’s space. But $750,000 would be a shot in the arm, no pun intended there, but could really put something tangible on the ground.”

The budget for the pilot is $15 million and is being self-funded out of pocket by individual members, Finnikin said.

Old Harbour has been averaging roughly 20 murders annually over the last three years, with the fishing village of Old Harbour Bay dubbed a hotspot by the police because it is one of several unmanned ports of entry around the island used by criminals for the illicit guns for drugs trade. 

Due to restrictions training, Finnikin said, has been focused on the spiritual aspect. It is the view of the group, he said “that man is a spirit, he has a soul and he needs a body”.

“So all these three dimensions we have to provide intervention and support to the whole man. So there are no apologies to the evangelistic, Christ-centered approach to it because we are after the transformation of the whole man,” said Finnikin, a respected community figure and wearer of multiple hats.

The social activists, who recently organised a peaceful protest in the community of Spring Village in the wake of the recent murder of two elderly sisters, said “$750,000 could finance two programmes” under the Old Harbour Bay pilot which were delayed for implementation in the second week in October as the government extended its decree for more covid-19 restrictions.

“But because the lockdown had continued we had to delay them,” he explained.

He outlined that the first programme will target boys (10-15 years old), engaging them in a series of holistic lifestyle practices, while the second programme (for boys and girls 12-17 years old) entails a two-pronged approach using performing arts to aid communication, negotiation and healthy interaction. A trainer of trainers initiative would then be pursued, he outlined, utilising the expertise of graduates from the Edna Manley College of Visual and the Performing Arts.

“Seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars right now will immediately start an impact that lead in a transformative way in years to come,” Finnikin said of the top prize being offered in the category of Community Projects under the programme.

According to Finnikin, who is also convener of the civic group Citizen Action Against Crime (CAAC), numerous crime-fighting initiatives have been proffered in years gone by, but lack of support from the government, businesses and NGOs stymied its progress. The common retort, he claimed by these groups, is that Old Harbour doesn’t meet the classification of an ‘a society at risk’ at the moment. But Finnikin and others say they are being proactive and prefer to be preventing fires rather than having to keep outing them which is the case of many communities across the country now trapped in a spiralling wave of crime and violence.

The group has been looking at best practices and models that could be adopted in Old Harbour through partnerships with Jamaican groups in the Diaspora while “looking to sustain it” over a protracted period.

Replicating the pilot over the Old Harbour development area is estimated at $100 million over three years and irrespective of one’s beliefs, likeminded persons are welcome to join the programme, Finnikin said.