Flankers community wins Manley award
Published: Sunday | August 2, 2009
Norman Grindley /Chief Photographer
LEFT: Marilyn McIntosh-Nash (second left), executive director of the Flankers Community Development Centre in St James, and other club members accepting the Michael Manley Award for Community Self-Reliance from Glynne Manley (third right), wife of former prime minister the late Michael Manley. It was the foundation's 10th annual awards ceremony held at the Little Theatre in St Andrew yesterday.
RIGHT: A section of the audience cheering on the winners at the 10th annual Michael Manley Award for Community Self-Reliance and the sixth EFJ award held at the Little Theatre yesterday.
The Flankers Community Development Centre yesterday walked away with the Michael Manley Award for Community Self-Reliance, a $200,000 cash prize and a bronze resin trophy sculpted by artist Kay Sullivan at the Little Theatre in St Andrew.
The Flankers project best exemplifies the Jamaican traditions of self-help and community cooperation. The Flankers Citizens' Association was formed in 1976 as a confederation of groups and individuals who had been previously engaged in various community initiatives and projects. The multifaceted centre has a homework club for primary-level students, offers GSAT and remedial classes from kindergarten to grade nine, as well as CXC classes in mathematics, English language and principles of business. It also offers computer studies, HEART/NTA-TVET Level 1 instruction, and hospitality skills training that has resulted in gainful employment for scores of youths.
White Horses-Botany Bay-Pamphret (WBP) Water Supply and Sanitation won the Environmental Foundation of Jamaica Award of $100,000 and a commemorative plaque. This project had the best credentials in the category of environmental conservation or child survival and development.
Three neighbouring St Thomas communities - White Horses, Botany Bay and Pamphret (WBP) - amalgamated in 2002 and formed a benevolent society to take piped water to some 750 households situated in the three communities.
Memorandum of understanding
They signed a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Water and Housing under the Government of Jamaica/Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Rural Water Programme, through which 90 per cent of the funding was secured through an IDB loan for the infrastructural development of a basic water-service and sanitation system. The remaining 10 per cent was contributed by the community in cash, materials and/or labour.
Through the benevolent society, the communities own and operate the system and have been selling water to the National Water Commission for supply to other communities in the parish. Additionally, the benevolent society has provided toilet facilities for some 40 indigent persons in the communities. With technical assistance from the Environmental Foundation of Jamaica, it has also been training householders and chicken farmers in the communities in proper waste disposal.
Other projects receiving merit awards were the New Building cooperative project in St Elizabeth, Hampton Court Banana Fibre, Leather Craft and Homework Centre in Portland/St Thomas, and the Point Hill Diagnostic Reading Centre in St Catherine.
