De­spite the chal­lenges like pover­ty and vi­o­lence that east Port-of-Spain com­mu­ni­ties face, the Kwame Ture Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tre, based in Laven­tille, con­tin­ues to be a bea­con of hope for these ar­eas.

Found­ing di­rec­tor of the Black Agen­da Project and man­ag­er of the Kwame Ture Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tre Rox­anne Muham­mad spoke to the Sun­day Guardian about the work the cen­tre has been do­ing in ed­u­ca­tion and as­sist­ing small busi­ness­es since it was set up four years ago.

She de­scribed the fa­cil­i­ty, which first opened in May 2018, as the train­ing arm of the Black Agen­da Project. Their tar­get group is peo­ple of African de­scent, she not­ed, but all oth­er groups are wel­come.

Ex­act­ly two years af­ter the protests and so­cial un­rest in East Port-of-Spain in 2020, un­rest once again rocked Port-of-Spain two weeks ago. And the protest had the same trig­ger–the po­lice-in­volved killing of three men. This time the in­ci­dent took place on In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain, on Ju­ly 2. The protests be­gan on the Beetham High­way and quick­ly spread to Sea Lots, and Nel­son and Dun­can streets as an­gry res­i­dents set fire to garbage and de­bris to protest the po­lice’s ac­tion.

Two years be­fore, on June 30, 2020, there was an ex­plo­sion of so­cial un­rest in East Port-of-Spain af­ter three men died in po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings in Mor­vant. Sev­er­al roads were blocked by pro­test­ers. There were re­ports of fires be­ing set and nu­mer­ous clash­es be­tween pro­test­ers and po­lice, with one Beetham woman–Or­nel­la Greaves–be­com­ing col­lat­er­al dam­age as she was struck by a bul­let, which ac­cord­ing to the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty came from a po­lice of­fi­cer dur­ing the cross­fire.

Com­ment­ing on the re­cent protests and un­rest, Muham­mad said young peo­ple are re­spond­ing to po­lice bru­tal­i­ty.

“The po­lice are be­ing the judge, the ju­ry, and the ex­e­cu­tion­er. A young, Black per­son from like St Paul Street came to the cen­tre and said he was in the Youth Train­ing Cen­tre (YTC) and said he does not want to be on the street. He wants train­ing at the cen­tre. What would have hap­pened if the po­lice had got him and treat­ed him as oth­er Black youths? The po­lice are killing them be­fore they can change their paths.”

She called on res­i­dents of the area to con­tin­ue work­ing with or­gan­i­sa­tions like the Kwame Ture Cen­tre where they will be trained and ed­u­cat­ed for job op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Muham­mad, re­spond­ing to the chal­lenges in the com­mu­ni­ties, said that they de­cid­ed to fo­cus on ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing pro­grammes as schools in East Port-of-Spain are “fail­ing”. She al­so felt more teach­ers of African de­scent who are cul­tur­al­ly sen­si­tive to the needs of the area are need­ed in schools.

“The com­po­si­tion of teach­ers is not from with­in the com­mu­ni­ty...They may not have a cul­tur­al sen­si­tiv­i­ty to­wards the chil­dren who grew up in ur­ban Port-of-Spain. If a stu­dent in this area gets $20 he’ll buy a box of KFC, some­one else from a dif­fer­ent area might pick a fruit in their back­yard. So if a teacher spends his mon­ey dif­fer­ent­ly, he may think he is su­pe­ri­or to these ‘ghet­to’ youths. That mind­set that gets in­to the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem cre­ates prob­lems. They don’t ex­pect much from the stu­dents.”

One of the pro­grammes they of­fer is the Com­mu­ni­ty Lead­er­ship Lessons In­ter­ven­tion Pro­gramme (CLLIP).

“It’s a CSEC lessons pro­gramme where we give free CSEC class­es in up to nine sub­jects such as math­e­mat­ics, Eng­lish, Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture, Ac­counts and Hu­man Bi­ol­o­gy. It’s a one-year pro­gramme and the stu­dents come in. We al­so do have lead­er­ship train­ing. We have about 40 stu­dents per cy­cle for a one-year pe­ri­od.”

Last year they part­nered with Glass Wing In­ter­na­tion­al which is part of the Citi Foun­da­tion Group to do skills-based train­ing.

She not­ed that all the pro­grammes are free.

“We did cell phone tech­nol­o­gy where stu­dents were giv­en pro­fes­sion­al tools and they were taught to re­pair cell phones. Some of them have start­ed to re­pair cell phones in their neigh­bour­hoods. We train them in jew­ellery man­u­fac­ture de­sign. We have train­ing in nail tech. We are al­so do­ing a ro­bot­ics pro­gramme which is a six-month pro­gramme. They have to do an ex­am at the end of it,” Muham­mad added.

They al­so as­sist busi­ness­es in east Port-of-Spain.

• Con­tin­ues on page 16

“We have a bi-month­ly black mar­ket. We know that Black busi­ness­es have al­ways been chal­lenged be­cause of a lack of sup­port. For that one week­end, we have the show, they can turn around their bot­tom line from red to black. They can rent the booths for less than $200. Ven­dors pay af­ter they sell.

“Apart from east Port-of-Spain, we have peo­ple com­ing from all over, from as far as Point Fortin in the South and from To­ba­go. We have about 50 ven­dors at each ex­po now. These busi­ness peo­ple are man­u­fac­tur­ers of house­hold clean­ing prod­ucts, food man­u­fac­tur­ers, leather craft per­sons, cloth­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers and much more.”

They have al­so cre­at­ed a part­ner­ship with a Black busi­ness cham­ber, the In­de­pen­dent Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (IBATT).

Every Fri­day they ask farm­ers to come to the cen­tre to sell pro­duce.

A free health clin­ic is of­fered every Fri­day where doc­tors of­fer their ser­vices to res­i­dents.

She ad­mit­ted that it is not cheap to run the cen­tre but small busi­ness peo­ple do­nate, the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices al­so as­sist their op­er­a­tions as well as the Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion.

Peo­ple al­so rent the cen­tre for meet­ings and oth­er events and from this, they are able to gen­er­ate in­come.

De­spite chal­lenges, she be­lieves that the cen­tre is a suc­cess.

She al­so spoke about an ur­ban agri­cul­ture project that they are work­ing on in Laven­tille.

This project is aimed at cul­ti­vat­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly half an acre of land off the cen­tre’s com­pound on Bertie Mar­shall Boule­vard, for­mer­ly Old St Joseph Road, Laven­tille.

Muham­mad said that it will pro­vide jobs and op­por­tu­ni­ties for many and be used as a cat­a­lyst for oth­er projects in and around the city.

They are seek­ing fi­nan­cial sup­port for the project.

The Kwame Ture Cen­tre is next to the Suc­cess Laven­tille Sec­ondary School. The land was a gift from the then Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment in 2015.

The ben­e­fi­cia­ries

Camille Pet­ti, 37, who is a small busi­ness own­er sell­ing chow and fruit bowls, said that she has tak­en part in the Kwame Ture Cen­tre’s Black Mar­ket for the last three years and she has ben­e­fit­ed.

“I’ve been par­tic­i­pat­ing in the black mar­ket for three years. I want to sup­port my Black com­mu­ni­ty. But al­so the cen­tre is warm and wel­com­ing as it gives me the op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet oth­er small busi­ness peo­ple like me and to get new cus­tomers.”

She said while there are many prob­lems in East port -of-Spain like crime and pover­ty, the ini­tia­tives of the Kwame Ture Cen­tre can as­sist res­i­dents to build busi­ness­es and be trained.

Terique Fran­cis, 18, is do­ing the ro­bot­ics course at the cen­tre.

He at­tend­ed Mu­cu­rapo West Sec­ondary School and is cur­rent­ly un­em­ployed.

He lives in Priz­gar Lands, Laven­tille, and a stone’s throw away from the cen­tre.

“I have learned to step out of my com­fort zone and to learn a new skill. I am learn­ing to be a team play­er and these skills are im­por­tant in get­ting a job.”

He al­so com­ment­ed on some of the prob­lems in the com­mu­ni­ty. Fran­cis be­lieves that more youths in the area should go to the cen­tre to learn new skills to be­come em­ploy­able and learn life skills in gen­er­al.

“Per­son­al­ly, I think hav­ing more train­ing will have a pos­i­tive ef­fect on youths in the ghet­to as we don’t have op­por­tu­ni­ties.”

Scot­land: $10,000 to be part of Com­mu­ni­ty Re­cov­ery Com­mit­tee a le­git­i­mate pay­ment

Mean­while, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Anil Roberts not­ed at the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’s last Mon­day Night Fo­rum that a pay­ment of $10,000 was made to Port-of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land for be­ing on the Board of the Com­mu­ni­ty Re­cov­ery Com­mit­tee which was set up in 2020 to ex­am­ine the prob­lems of east Port-of-Spain.

When Sun­day Guardian reached out to him, Roberts replied that “un­for­tu­nate­ly, it (the re­port) is a se­cret. No one has seen it. Noth­ing has been im­ple­ment­ed.”

Scot­land, who spoke to the Sun­day Guardian, said that it was a le­git­i­mate pay­ment and the Gov­ern­ment of Dr Kei­th Row­ley con­forms to all laws in gov­ern­ing the coun­try.

“The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­port cov­ers the aus­pices un­der which this was made and there are no is­sues from the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al. This is a non-is­sue.”

He al­so de­clined to com­ment on the rec­om­men­da­tions made in the Com­mit­tee’s Re­port say­ing any­one who wants to know about the re­port should go to the Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice or the Com­mit­tee’s chair­man, Dr An­tho­ny Watkins. The re­port has been sub­mit­ted to the Cab­i­net.