The community of Parade Gardens has been struggling to stem the high rate of crime, acts of delinquency and other negative activities which has crippled the community’s growth and development.
For the past three years, various organized groups within the community with the support of the Social Development Commission (SDC), have come together to form an umbrella body called the Parade Gardens Community Committee (CDC). In March 2011 the CDC became a legally registered body under the name Parade Gardens CDC Benevolent Society. One of their objectives is to represent the needs of the residents of Parade Gardens as well as creating an avenue that will sustain peace among residents of Tel-A-Viv and South Side which are adversaries in the community.
Sports as also been used as a vehicle to promote youth inclusion, community development and peace in volatile communities and as such the implementation of sporting programmes in Parade Gardens was the best medium to bring unity to fractioned communities.
The Parade Gardens CDC Benevolent Society in partnership with the Social Development Commission (SDC) and Citizen Security and Justice Programme (CSJP) have created several sporting activities and life skills workshops which will focus on areas of team building, conduct and attitudes and conflict resolution. The focus of the sporting activities will be to use various techniques of the games to identify and solve conflict, as well as to identify challenges that young people often face in their day to day lives. There will also be post life skills workshop following the sporting events which will look at best practices and the way forward.
The overall aim of this budding partnership is to lessen the tension that exists across the community borders and to strengthen the CDC with the help of the Social Development Commission and other stakeholders. So that there is wider representation and participation of the community to have access to information, projects, programmes and grants that the Parade Gardens can benefit from.
Did you Know
Future plans are in place to have an annual sporting activity which will pull in a wider cross section of residents in Parade Gardens and eventually the entire Central Kingston.