Two decades ago, the Mon Re­pos Plan­nings, a Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) apart­ment com­plex in San Fer­nan­do, was a place where few peo­ple ven­tured for fear of get­ting robbed.

There were fre­quent vi­o­lent clash­es be­tween war­ring gangs from Mara­bel­la and Co­coyea and al­though the Mon Re­pos Po­lice Sta­tion was near­by, il­lic­it drugs were sold in the stair­ways and cor­ri­dors of the di­lap­i­dat­ed build­ings.

Then in ear­ly 2003, un­der the stew­ard­ship of for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, an ag­gres­sive so­cial in­ter­ven­tion pro­gramme was launched. Coun­cil­lor for Mon Re­pos/Navet Sha­ka Joseph, who lived in the Plan­nings, be­gan work­ing with so­cial wel­fare of­fi­cers to de­vel­op civic pride in the com­mu­ni­ty.

Pleas­antville coun­cil­lor Robert Par­ris re­called that at the time Joseph was an at-risk youth. How­ev­er, Man­ning saw his po­ten­tial and helped him to turn his life around.

“Joseph was able to use his per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ences to en­cour­age oth­er young peo­ple from the Plan­nings to take their ed­u­ca­tion se­ri­ous­ly,” Par­ris said.

Home­work cen­tres were set up and young peo­ple were en­cour­aged to get in­volved in sports and the Po­lice Youth Club.

“Com­put­er lit­er­a­cy cours­es start­ed in the com­mu­ni­ty. The youths start­ed at­tend­ing MIC. They be­gan tak­ing ad­van­tage of MUST pro­grammes. Sha­ka be­came a suc­cess sto­ry. He trained to be an air-con­di­tioned tech­ni­cian. Har­ri­son White­man was in­stru­men­tal in in­tro­duc­ing so­cial pro­grammes,” Par­ris said.

The Kalo­mo Kings pan the­atre was built and im­pov­er­ished young peo­ple got an op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­gre­gate in a pos­i­tive space.

To­day, 16 years lat­er, res­i­dents from the Plan­nings no longer live with the stig­ma of crim­i­nal gangs.

Young en­tre­pre­neur Akeem Wise, 23, who sells pas­tries out­side of the Plan­nings, said al­though the res­i­dents strug­gle with un­em­ploy­ment and un­der­em­ploy­ment they try to get in­volved in pos­i­tive ac­tiv­i­ties.

“I feel safe sell­ing here be­cause I am home. I have been look­ing for work for five months now and then two months ago my friend en­cour­aged me to open this pas­try out­let,” he said.

“Mon Re­pos is a nice place now. There are still some of my friends who are afraid to pass through when they hear I am liv­ing in Mon Re­pos Plan­nings but no­body here in­ter­feres with you. The po­lice sta­tion is close by and we have many pos­i­tive youths who are mak­ing an hon­est liv­ing.”

For­mer San Fer­nan­do May­or Ian Ather­ly said the so­cial pro­grammes im­ple­ment­ed in Mon Re­pos should be tak­en oth­er ar­eas where crime is ram­pant.

“I grew up in Mon Re­pos. It was al­ways a nice place. When I was a boy I would spin top, pick chen­nette and I used to run through the Plan­nings. It was safe back then. The so­cial pro­grammes they did in Mon Re­pos should con­tin­ue. Sport is an av­enue to re­duce crime,” he said.

Ather­ly said he is con­cerned about gang war­fare in oth­er parts of the coun­try and he sug­gests that apart from ar­rest­ing gang lead­ers, it was im­por­tant to have so­cial in­ter­ven­tion pro­grammes.

That view is shared by a young res­i­dent in the apart­ment com­plex, Kyle Lewis, who would like to see pro­grammes of cul­ture, sports, ed­u­ca­tion and recre­ation in oth­er ar­eas af­fect­ed by gang war­fare.

“It will take an­oth­er two decades to bring peace but these so­cial pro­grammes are what helped us. Maybe in­stead of ar­rest­ing peo­ple, the youths should be giv­en op­por­tu­ni­ties to bet­ter them­selves,” he said.