The key tools of reading, writing and basic mathematics are being given high priority in an innovative drive to empower hundreds of vulnerable young Jamaicans in Negril, Montego Bay and Spanish Town.

The effort is designed to reduce the number of youngsters with economic and other challenges who fall prey to the lures of human traffickers. The young people are also receiving skills training, career guidance and a positive boost in self-esteem. In addition, they are also alerted to the way traffickers operate and those with leadership potential are being trained as peer educators.

This prevention initiative is the one-year Anti-Trafficking Project 3, launched in May 2008 by People's Action for Community Transformation (PACT), with funding support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). It also includes a wider public education programme targeting thousands of Jamaicans islandwide.

Community organisations

PACT is working with a network of community organisations, three of which are carrying out the training of the 14-24-year-old youths. These are Church Action Negril, the Western Society for the Upliftment of Children in Montego Bay and Children First in Spanish Town.

Lorna Peddie, training development specialist with the Anti-Trafficking Project 3, explains the importance of the emphasis on remedial education. "In the past, a lot of youngsters like these - lacking in resources as well as jobs - have been unable to make effective use of skills training and other much-needed opportunities, just because their basic education has been really weak. That is why we have designed this project with a 'built-in safety net', so to speak, in the form of the remedial education component."

Peddie, a trained social worker and counsellor, notes that poor literacy and numeracy skills among schoolchildren and school leavers constitute a significant national challenge. She cites the fact that 25 per cent of the students who sat the Grade 4 Literacy Test in 2007 were unsuccessful. "Even though this was an improvement on the 2005 results," she says, "it is cause for concern that a quarter of our in-school youngsters are not achieving mastery in this basic foundation area of education."

She said all of the 409 youngsters receiving skills training under the Anti-Trafficking Project 3 are enrolled in remedial education training. Of these at-risk young persons, 307 or 75 per cent, are male.