Spring of Hope: Community launches values and attitudes programme in Spring Village to stop social rot

Inside a giant classroom at the Institute of Vocational and Professional Training was a different temperature altogether as roughly 70 students from the Spring Gardens Primary School next door filed in for a new programme - Spring of Hope - a values and attitude initiative aimed at stopping the social decay plaguing the community and indeed the wider society. These issues didn't become a national crisis overnight  but rather have been eating away at the core of our social structures. Here students are taught basic social graces, adages of the past that were once second nature in every Jamaican child and community.

Audrey Maragh-Fuller, a justice of the peace, is the brainchild behind the programme. She tells Old Harbour News that society needs to right the wrongs and the children is where it must begin with.

Maragh leads a team of five volunteers, herself included, who on a weekly basis - for two hours every Wednesday - engage the students and inculcate in them social habits that fosters unity and peace.

It has always been her “dream” to initiate a values and attitude programme at Spring Gardens Primary based in Spring Village in southwest St Catherine, a community that has seen its socio-economic stature dissipate over time and which hit rock bottom in recent times with the double murder of eldlerly sisters Christine and Lola Lewis. Their gruesome deaths jolted the entire Jamaica and caused Maragh-Fuller to fast-track her plans.

“We need to get the programme started where we can teach our children how to be softer, gentler people,” she said. “This is something that the homes are lacking and the communities in general are lacking. We have to find a group of people to start the change and change comes through educating and loving our children even more. Teaching them how to be better people, how to be kind people, to be forgiving people, to have respect and to teach them civic pride.”

The call for the reintroduction of civics on the national education curriculum has been mooted for several decades without a timeline set. However, Maragh-Fuller, who is a true patriot at heart, is keen to play her part to reverse the level of decadence through her Spring of Hope programme.

Winsome Gunn-Williams is one of the volunteers. Though her children are adults, she needed no convincing to come aboard the programme. The nation has fallen into a social abyss that requires all hands in deck, she contends.

“Most of the children don't know etiquette. Nowadays children pass you like strangers and then some of the language coming from their mouths. 
"It would be great that we can bring back Jamaica," said Gunn-Williams, a resident of High House.

A return to those proud glory days of social stability in which the community was a united force for good will take some doing, however. It's a doable task, said Shernette Chambers-Bedward,  principal,  Spring Gardens Primary, who deemed the programme to be of "vital importance to our school".

She said: "Mrs Maragh-Fuller has seen it fit to initiate this programme because she has seen the crime and violence in our community and how it is escalating. When she came up with the idea I was very elated because if the students are taught outside of school with unfamiliar faces then I think when they are at school the teachers will have more time to focus on the academics more than on behavioural problems.

"So I really believe that it is a very good programme and we are looking forward to seeing what the results that we will reap in coming years."

There are early signs that the message is already getting through to the children, as some are eager to share their experiences with their teachers the following day.
For Maragh-Fuller and the team, the ultimate goal is to deliver a holistic experience that will last for a lifetime. 

“It is time for some healing and we can only do it by practically demonstrating that: to hug them, to love them. Let them feel that somebody cares, the need to have that feeling of family.

Remember that’s where we are coming from, that was our heritage, our background," she said.

Sustaining such a vital initiative is crucial to its success for the organizers. The children need to be fed during the sessions, she pointed, before appealing for items such as cushions, carpets, rugs, as they intend to recreate "the ambiance of a family room”.

Michael Harris, president of the Harris Family Foundation Inc,  has thrown his support behind the programme. After donating a few stationery and oral hygiene items to the students, he said: "We are lacking value. It’s good when you teach kids to show gratitude, so they know that when they receive something, no matter how small it is, they can say ‘thank you’ and they’re grateful for what they receive.”

Throwing its full support behind the programme is the Social Development Commission (SDC). Shellice Brown is the SDC’s community development officer working closely with Maragh-Fuller and the volunteers. Each week they meet and evaluate the challenges.

"It is very important that we support this because children learn a lot from parents without parents recognizing what we are doing. And sometimes it's not that they want the child to learn what they are doing but because they don't have the time. And if we can do this for the parents it's a small contribution to show them what love is, what respect is, how to care and it will be a great part in shaping who they will become later down in life," said Brown.

Social activist Randy Finnikin has lauded the programme as it complements other pillars of its broader violence interruption strategy being implemented in communities across the Greater Old Harbour area.

"We support it and we would want to replicate such types of interventions aimed at our young children," he said.

Schools like Spring Gardens are dogged by behavioural challenges and in the absence of civics makes everything else, including teaching, more difficult. And as pointed out by Chambers-Bedward, teachers spent much of their morning sessions in class “focusing on correcting these negative behaviours.”

Angella Richards is a grandmother who has been attending the values and attitudes sessions. She believes the programme can change the community for the better.

"This will give them (children) a strong idea how to look out for each other in the future, so they will be better parents, better neighbours, better friends and better adults in the future," she said. "So we are trying to teach these children how to get back to those days of growing up where the community raised the child, so they can be better parents than the ones we have now."

Eleven year-old Felicia Harridon is enthralled by the meaning of words such as love, gratitude, civic pride and the power they evokes. She’s also fascinated by the way she and her peers will be able to incorporate these adages into habits in their daily lives “that we don’t get caught into any fight when we get older”.

Richards added: "Nowadays sometimes you can't talk to your neighbour without it cause any friction… so teaching these children the right way will let them know that you look out for your neighbour and help to grow your neighbour’s children."

Though the focus is on the children, the sessions are open to adults too from the area, said Maragh-Fuller “because the whole family has to be healed”.

She pointed to the seemingly established culture of selfishness that has been normalised throughout the society where people remain strangers despite living in the same community for years.

"We will teach them how to differentiate between genuine love and abuse," added the respected JP, who is an executive member of the Bushy Park Community Development Committee. "We will teach them how to respond to people, and not be quick to fight. Learn how to be tender, how to listen and learn how to respond kindly to people. Learn how to prevent conflicts. And if there is a conflict, learn how to resolve it."