May Pen Mayor Milton Brown played host to Miss Clarendon Festival Queen, Zuleika Jess, when he and his secretary-manager Judy McKenzie-Lawrence had lunch with her at the Halse Hall Great House in Clarendon on Tuesday.

Accompanied by her chaperone, Pauline Henry-Blake, Jess, a final-year law student at the University of the West Indies, seized the opportunity to solicit financial help from the mayor to push forward her project, titled 'Young Men at Risk'. The project is aimed at training young unemployed men in the Western Park area in electrical engineering.

An impassioned Jess stated her case to the mayor by providing the background to the situation that exists in the poverty-stricken community.

Although aware of some of the challenges, the mayor was dumbfounded by the fact that just five per cent of the male population in the community was employed.

specific training

According to Jess, the young men specifically asked to be trained in electrical engineering and to be certified at the end of the course.

Jess explained that HEART Trust/NTA had agreed to assist in the training and, if all went well, she hoped that they would eventually take over the running of the training centre.

She said that for them to do this, however, certain guidelines would have to be followed and infrastructure would have to be in place.

Jess told the mayor that for now, the trainees would not be able to pay their way through the course for obvious reasons and hoped that the Clarendon Parish Council could offer some help.

Brown did not commit to any financial help at the luncheon but committed his skills to the project, as he was an electrical engineer and had taught the discipline.

Jess was second runner-up in the Miss Jamaica Festival Queen final. She will be returning to Barbados to complete her law degree in September.

- Angella Chin