After a little lie-in I sacrificed my morning off to go to the women’s centre. So while everyone else was lounging in the pool I was out doing interviews... true dedication.
The women’s centre in Kingston I visited is one of many across the island. It’s a centre for young mums where they can go during the end and after their pregnancy.
Its main driving force is education, so the young women go during the school terms from 9-3 Monday – Thursdays. Here they learn normal school subjects like maths, English, history and drama as well take part in individual and group counselling. The counselling involves sex education so that the girls have the education that they need to make the right decisions in the future, as it’s better late than never. There is a huge emphasis on getting their students back into the national school system, because here in Jamaica a girl is made to leave the school once it is discovered that she’s pregnant.
As the centre only runs during the term time and we were visiting in the summer holidays, I was slightly worried about how worthwhile the visit would be if there no young people there.
Thankfully I couldn’t have been more wrong, I spoke to Beryl Weir, the executive director, and I don’t think there would have been anyone more appropriate for me to meet because she was so passionate and proud to be a part of the centre and she has a lot to be proud of including successfully getting 35,000 students back into school after their pregnancy.
Then I truly hit the jackpot with the woman I met because although she wasn’t a young person she was a former student of the centre now working there and her life was such an amazing success story showing pure courage and strength.
After going to the centre which has been running for nearly 30 years and being deeply impressed by its work I had to settle for a disappointing lunch at Wendy’s, but it was quickly forgotten when we got to the Portmore Youth Information Centre.
This centre is like a cyber café especially for young people with free internet access that also runs youth clubs. It sounds simple but for the first time our visit hit a few glitches. The centre is one small room filled with computers and lots of people wandering around, so feeling like we were hovering about in the way made us all feel slightly awkward to begin with.
What's more, continually throughout the afternoon there were people constantly coming and going so it was difficult to know who was a part of the sessions, to concentrate on what was going on and really interact with others. But like the good youth advisers we are, we put these challenges aside and just got on with the day.
One of the youth workers gave a short sex and relationships education session telling us more about the situation in Jamaica and I have never heard anyone talk about sex so openly.
One of the very first questions she asked us was “Who’s had sex?” and that was shocking, to say the least. But the Jamaican young people were far more comfortable with the approach and willing to talk about why they had sex.
It was soon very clear about our cultural differences and how a lot more issues are openly discussed in Jamaica that are usually only acceptable in private conversations in the UK.
Later on the sketch my group did--yes more drama--surprisingly provoked an on-going debate on gender relationships, and it showed me that all these young people were confident, opinionated and out-spoken, which is something that can be hard to find in the UK. Throughout the week I have noticed that shyness doesn’t exist here and that everyone is naturally out-going.
But we did eventually get a chance to get to know some of the young people there as when we were doing interviews there wasn’t a specific topic to focus on, so it could have been very difficult but it actually gave us an opportunity to have an informal chat and find out what daily life is like for young people in Jamaica. Then after a huge number of photos we left.
As it’s my birthday tomorrow our super-fantastic driver, Steve, took us to a gorgeous restaurant (which really made up for Wendy’s). It was an amazing night with lots of songs kindly dedicated to me by the other youth advisers and the DJ who also really got into the spirit of my birthday!
After the girl’s pyjama and cheesy music party, which finished off our day, I really must be getting some sleep for my birthday!
