THE increasing number of gangs in Westmoreland may be a worrying trend for pastor and social employee Bishop Joyce Bernard, but she believes this trend will be broken through education, and therefore the intervention of the church.
"Rapidly there is too much gangs and garrisons," said Bernard who pastors the Central Tabernacle Deliverance Centre in Savanna-la-Mar within the parish.
"They are simply spreading wider and wider, however we tend to recognize education can curb some of these problems," she told the Sunday Observer on a recent visit there.
Seeing the requirement for a lot of basic faculties to help with this mission in particular, the pastor started the Central Early Childhood Institute in 2000 to help build a solid foundation on that kids could develop academically. The school currently has a hundred and twenty students enrolled, and while the Education Ministry subsidises the salaries for the academics and offers nutrition grants, the church finances most of the institution's activities.
"We have a very big Sunday college and we tend to work terribly closely with troubled areas such as New Market Oval and Hudson Street - that space that is dubbed 'Russia' - and because we tend to work closely with them, we have a tendency to saw the need. It's our means of giving back to the community," the pastor reasoned.
Judging from the success of past students, Bernard believes the college is acheiving its objectives. She is currently coming up with to a start every day care centre to supply a stable atmosphere for young ones whose folks work outside the home.
Whereas the first childhood institution has been thriving, this has not been the case for a night category that the bishop started a few years ago to assist faculty drop-outs. These students' classes were held in the same rooms employed by the toddlers during the day and were attended by boys between the ages of 9 to 16, who were not in the formal faculty setting for whatever reason.
"We have a tendency to would teach them numeracy, literacy and offer counselling to teach them how they could be well-rounded individuals," said Bernard, who noted that the intention was to induce them enrolled into the ancient school system when that they had progressed to a bound point.
The programme was mainly funded by a global donor. Sadly, the programme was scrapped when the donor was unable to finance the venture anymore. It is the pastor's hope that the Tabernacle can in the future reintroduce this programme within the community.
In the meantime, the church continues to help some parents in educating their kids by providing grants or scholarships. Each year, at least 2 students are granted scholarships to attend the early childhood institution, after an assessment by the church confirms that they are really in need. The church also provides financial grants to help older youngsters or seeks help for them from other agencies.
"The unemployment rate is high, however if, for example, we tend to cannot offer all the needs, I work with the Ministry of Labour and Social Security so thereby I will advocate folks to go to the office and build an application for the PATH Programme," Bernard pointed out.
"There are quite a few things where the living conditions are extraordinarily bad and the kids don't seem to be attending faculty and so we tend to can request facilitate from other agencies and create sure they're in faculty," she said.
Bernard, who has worked at the Girls Centre of Jamaica Foundation for over 15 years, said she enjoys serving to where there is a need. She has received a range of citations for volunteerism and was awarded the Governor General's award 2 years ago.
As a pastor, the bishop believes the role of the church extends beyond satisfying man's physical needs. It's for this reason that her church has introduced a range of social initiatives to help the poor.
"We tend to believe during a holistic ministry as a result of even Jesus had that sort of a ministry where he had the folks and after he had fed them spiritually, he asked them to sit down down and let the disciple go and get bread for them, thus you've got to cater to the entire person," she said.
Each month, members of the church visit the Savanna-la-mar Hospital and residents who are shut-ins to distribute cooked meals or food packages. Last year, the church donated fifteen machines for blood glucose testing in hospital patients. A member of the facility's employees told her they could not do the blood sugar test on for a nine-year-old lady who had gotten sick at church, as a result of they may not locate testing equipment.
The church's latest initiative to assist patients at the hospital is a 'sheet' drive, which is reaping much success. Bernard said she realised the hospital was short of sheets for patients' beds when her mother was a patient there 2 years ago. The church has collected a number of sheets that they set up to hand over soon.
"We tend to need to create it an ongoing project, an annual project where each year we have a tendency to collect a range of sheets and take them right down to the hospital. It helps mentally and revives you (the patient) just to possess one thing clean and nice," the pastor said.
Please visit Choas, Deliverance and The Haunted on TV Tonight for more post.
No comments:
Post a Comment