Digicel Foundation refurbishes multipurpose room at Rise Life


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Digicel Foundation refurbishes multipurpose room at Rise Life

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Digicel Foundation refurbishes multipurpose room at Rise Life

With its continued focus on empowering our youth through education, the Digicel Foundation has supported the refurbishing of a multipurpose training centre at RISE Life Management Services in Down Town Kingston. Approximately 2000 inner city adolescents, young adults and community members benefit from the educational, health and vocational skills programmes.

The opening ceremony will take place on Wednesday, November 9 at 3pm at Rise Life’s East Street Headquarters Downtown.

Guest Speakers include: Senator Warren Newby, Ministry of Youth, Sports and Culture, Major General Robert Neish, Digicel Foundation Executive Vice Chair, Ronald Thwaites, Deacon and Member of Parliament, Gregory McClure, Chairman of RISE Life, and Sonita Morin Abrahams, Executive Director of RISE Life.

Rise Life is one of the primary Non-Governmental Organizations that supports inner city youth, through a multifaceted approach by designing and implementing educational-skills training and self-help programmes. Some of the Services provided by Rise Life include an Adolescent Educational Enrichment & Life Skills Programme for over 800 children ages 8-14 from eight inner city communities.  RISE Life, also offers interventions for older youth and adults in the prevention and treatment of addictive disorders, violence and HIV/AIDS prevention, child labour prevention and removal, human rights training, exam preparation and entrepreneurship and employability skills training. The centre, which has been in use since August of this year, already serves approximately 2000 adolescents, young adults and community members.

Allman Town, Fletchers Land, Parade Gardens, Waterhouse, Tower Hill, Majestic Gardens, Riverton City and Drewsland are among the communities that have benefited from a wide variety of youth development programmes: “The Foundation is always in support of community resource centres that engage in capacity building for our youth. We are even more enthused about becoming more involved in downtown, especially since this area will be Digicel’s new home.” remarked Major General Robert Neish, Executive Vice Chair of the Digicel Foundation.

The multipurpose training centre will be buzzing with activity from 8am-7pm housing an array of classes for differing age-groups. The training centre provides an additional meeting place for the Alliance for Youth—Entrepreneurship, Employability and Internship Programme, which currently trains inner city youth in employable skills and entrepreneurship.

 

“It was a God send!” exclaimed Sonita Abrahams, Executive Director of Rise Life. “We were bursting at the seams as we had triple the amount of adults and adolescents registering for our programmes than what we budgeted for, now we can accommodate them in a comfortable and inviting environment, rather than in the hot, dilapidated room we had before.”

 

Among the courses being offered in the Digicel sponsored multipurpose centre are:

  • A HEART-certified commercial food preparation programme, disaster preparedness and peer mediation training.
  • After-school remedial education & exam preparation programme.
  • The Parenting Place, under the Community Upliftment and Human Rights Awareness Programme.
  • Youth Recycling for Income Generation Project using recycled materials (plastic bottles & tires) to generate income and beautify communities.
  • OBRA, an Entrepreneurship, Employability and internship programme.

 

In addition to the unveiling of the multipurpose centre, the Digicel ‘Go Green’ team will also be on hand to assist in the start-up of a herb/vegetable garden on the grounds of Rise Life. The goal is to cultivate a variety of seasonings/spices that can be utilized in the kitchen by students participating in the food preparation course. 

Digicel Foundation refurbishes multipurpose room at Rise Life