Building Bridges: Value Initiative Program in Jamaica
The poor urban communities in Jamaica’s capital and major towns are a measureable manifestation of nearly five decades of development failure. The prevalence of violence and crime have had a corrosive effect on education, investment, access to decent work, supportive family life, and social cohesion. More than 60 percent of Jamaicans living in poverty are below the age of 25. Jamaica’s population includes a large cohort of “unattached”1 people between the ages of 15 and 24. The unemployment rate of youth between 14 and 19 is 46% and is almost 30% for those between 20 and 24 years of age.2
CREATING WEALTH IN INNER-CITY COMMUNITIES IN KINGSTON, JAMAICA1
The prevailing development paradigm tends to see the solution to urban poverty as indirect—requiring more “effective” policing; medium- to long-term investment in improving educational opportunities; devising strategies for reducing crime; and interventions for learning better “values and attitudes.” In 2008, in response to the SEEP Network’s global call for proposals for the development of urban value chains, The Competitiveness Company (CC), a Jamaican NGO, was awarded the “Building a Bridge to a World of Opportunities: Developing a Jamaican Ornamental Fish Urban Value Chain” project. In 2011, funded by USAID, the “Collaborate to Prosper: Microenterprise Development in Jamaica through Value Chains and Clusters” follow-on project built on earlier work. These projects do not fit within the prevailing paradigm concerning urban poverty. They focus directly on incomegenerating prospects within inner-city communities in Jamaica (Kingston, St. Andrew and St. Catherine). They focus on the engagement of the poor as creators of wealth in a global value chain, and on facilitating success in a viable, alternative pathway out of poverty that rivals opportunities offered in the drug trade, crime and gang culture.