National Peace Programme Marks First Anniversary with Positive Impact on Community Stability and Crime Prevention

The National Peace Programme’s administrators have insisted there’s been a substantial improvement in overall stability across communities as the government initiative to stem violent crime observes its first anniversary.

So far, more than 1 000 young men and women have passed through the programme which has empowered them to be more positive and productive citizens, Alison Roach Plummer, the programme’s director, revealed on Monday.

Authorities have touted the NPP as an essential tool for preventing and reducing crime in the short, medium and long term. It includes various activities for strategic prevention of crime in the short term and self-development, training and opportunities for the medium to long term.

“Over 1 200 young people have been engaged already in the National Peace Programme, both male and female. The atmosphere has changed,” Roach Plummer told Barbados TODAY.

“When have you had an incident,” she asked, “where you had young people in one space in the last few months coming together and the police had to bring in the strong hand of the law? When was the last time you saw that at any cricket or any football or any event that they had lately? You have not.”

She also reported that residents in communities who in the past feared for their lives and therefore refused to leave their homes are now getting involved in the peace efforts.

“Community engagement has picked up significantly from before,” Roach Plummer said. “In the past when there was all of the shootings and the violence, people were not keen to come out of their houses. We didn’t have young people who were engaged in wholesome, meaningful engagements. They were no longer coming out to see family members. A lot of things were buttoned down.

“But, we would have started having hands-on within weeks of commencing something we called Flip the Script in which we had engaged over 180 young persons to come together, that might have never met each other from before. We narrowed it done to 90 with aftercare, an eight to 10-week programme, where we had persons between the ages of nine right up to 20-something coming together in a room.”

The NPP director said the participants were exposed to skills that included life coaching, mediation and anger management.

She summarised the gamut of offerings as basic skills that would allow the young people to navigate being in the company of strangers: “From there, we went to other programmes which saw persons coming out of their shells to do something like a barbering programme, a bar tendering programme, learning how to make craft. We had a sporting initiative as well, which brought communities together that were not together for years, didn’t cross over for years.”