Scaled-down but lively ceremony marks Peace Day in schools
FACED with financial constraints, the Peace and Love in Schools (PALS) programme yesterday staged a scaled-down, but lively, Peace Day Awards ceremony in the auditorium of the Trench Town High School in Kingston.
Just under 50 students, teachers, and parents of Trench Town High and Charlie Smith High were presented with awards in recognition of their efforts at promoting peace and conflict resolution in their schools and the wider community. However, the resounding cheers of the students, in response to professionally delivered performances by the Alpha Boy’s Band, the Trench Town Steel Band and recording artiste Abijah, belied the size of the small gathering.
In years gone by, the annual event was a national concert and awards ceremony, complete with a star-studded line-up of performers, and presentations being made to outstanding students and schools from across the island. Yesterday, however, only students and staff from the two inner-city high schools, PALS officials and a handful of outsiders came to celebrate the efforts of the students.
This scaling down, according to Stewart Garwood, project manager of PALS, stems from the not-for-profit organisation’s ongoing battle to keep running, given its limited financial resources.
“Right now, the programme is doing well, but we could be doing a lot better in terms of getting programmes fully implemented in more schools, but we have a problem getting financing to sustain the programmes,” said Garwood.
But even with the limited funds, PALS is still continuing to make a positive impact.
“The schools that we are in, are reporting changes; not only with the students, but with the teachers, with the student-student relationships, student teacher relationship, so we have successful reports, but of course it could be a lot more,” Garwood added.
The programme’s lack of funding has not dampened the resolve of the two schools to change their general atmosphere to one of peace and co-operation. Trench Town High, for instance, joined the PALS programme in 2000, and since then, according to principal Grace Smith, the programme has helped her students and staff to cope with the spill-over of violence from the wider community into the school.
“Although you can’t really quantify the situation, the PALS programme is certainly helping,” said Smith, who herself received an award from PALS for her commitment to making sure the Trench Town High PALS programme takes root.
At Trench Town High, a school whose pupils hail from some of the most impoverished and violence-riddled communities in the country, the most noticeable difference is a reduction in the number of students who are sent to the principal’s office for fighting or other conflicts.
“Once there is any conflict in any community from which the students come, they come in with the tension and you find that it sparks a quarrel for nothing at all; but once we see this happening or about to happen, we start to put in control measures, using what we have learnt from PALS,” explained the principal.
The reduction in the number of conflicts that actually turn into fights, according to Smith, also has to do with a “broader spread of awareness”, because, since PALS began at Trench Town High, “all of us are now trained to deal with conflict resolution.there are peer mediators, conflict managers or the guidance officers themselves who can and do intervene”.
Marcus Smith, a 14 year-old student of Charlie Smith High who received a certificate at the ceremony, agrees that the programme has been a success.
“I have problems myself, and sometimes these same people (the PALS trainers) help me with my problems,” he said.
Now that he is armed with conflict resolution and intervention skills, Marcus is determined to make a difference in his school and community.
“If I can help someone else, then I am more than willing. This is a volunteer programme, so anyone that seeks help can get it. Whatever the problems is, though, the main point is to get both sides to come out of the room feeling good about themselves and not fighting,” he added.