Couple helps at-risk youth through skills programmes

Winters Pen, St Catherine is the home of New Horizon Christian Outreach Ministry, where Michael Barnett and his wife Sophia, have been offering skills training to at-risk youth in the area and surrounding communities since 2007.

"For the past two and a half years, we have ventured more into training persons for social enterprises. This means not only do we give them the requisite skills training, but we are also training them to take up a job immediately in whatever venture they choose," said Barnett, who is a qualified engineering skills trainer.

Currently the organisation offers welding and fabrication and was a recent recipient of a grant from the Supreme Ventures Foundation.

"We are not partnering with HEART Trust right now but we are working with persons who have been pre-trained so we are building on those persons to create social enterprises. We are not saying that we will not be moving back to training persons from scratch, but we are in a transition mode now so we are creating the base for social enterprising within the organisation," he said.

"We have been using bamboo which many consider to be a waste material in Jamaica to create different types of craft items that can be sold readily to generate income towards the facility. We have also partnered with other entities to employ our students," he added.

At least 50 students

Barnett said they would usually have at least 50 students yearly but "still consider them to be a part of the family".

"They are now working in skill areas such as food preparation, glass and plastic recycling, machine building, agriculture and so on. We had a team of instructors that used to come in but as I mentioned before, we had to seek to create a form of income base for the organisation so that is where the bamboo business comes in," he said.

Currently there are four full-time persons on the team who Barnett said are still having a massive impact.

"We have recently completed projects for the 4H clubs that will impact over 40,000 clubbites in Jamaica. So what this means is that even though we are not physically training 50 students per year, we are still impacting the lives of thousands which is greater than the 50 bodies that are usually here and that we believe is a good way to reach out to Jamaica, " he said.

Barnett said that when the COVID -19 pandemic hit local shores in March, he and his wife had to think of innovative ways to keep afloat; they asked unmarried men to take space in their dorms.

"We had to lock down and lock in so that we could remain open and take jobs and just work in the workshops daily. If we didn't do that we would have to close our doors entirely," he said.