Trench Town Ceramics and Art Centre 

     The Trench Town Ceramic and Arts Centre is a registered non - governmental community based organization, which was established on September 2, 2012 situated within the district of Rose town and located at 38-40 Upper First Street Kingston, Jamaica. The centre’s management team consists of two Person: Chief Executive Officer is Mr. Garfield Williams and Production Manager Mr. Errol Jackson. In addition to the management team there are also five other staff member who engage in the production of the ceramics and art Products, such as wood work and cardboard art. The operators of the establishment have over 15 years of experience in the field of Ceramics and art production.

      Trench Town has an estimate population of 27, 284 individuals, of that 42.17% include person’s ages 0-25. In light of the condition in which the community is in with regards to the issues of the growing number of at risk youths, the management team of Trench Town Ceramic and Arts Centre is interested in developing a program to include those at risk, so that they may learn the skill of creating Ceramic art and also to have an educational aspect which includes areas such as numeracy, literacy, anger management and conflict resolution, Parenting and sex education, Business development, Hygiene nutrition, Prevention against domestic violence Public and motivational speaking.

      This program, which will be held over a period of 2 years, will be divided into 2 broad components namely education and training. The educational component will entail a classroom type of learning which will focus on the areas  of numeracy and literacy and other theoretical  areas aforementioned, while the training component will focus on participants learning the various levels of ceramic production including how to make the following: Tourist souvenirs’, planters, pots vases, house hold items, figurines, gifts backdrops, banners and props for plays and skits and also drawings. In light of the development challenges being faced in community of Trench Town including issues such as high unemployment and little or no opportunities for Training and Development, this plan of action is being proposed as one way to mitigate against these problems and by extension help to address the is of crime and violence. The latter has been an area of concern for a number of community members, particularly regarding the impact of this issue on those youth on the street corners who are considered to be at risk. This project is intended nto be one method of getting them off the streets and engaging them in more productive and acceptable activities,

       To this end the program will target twenty to thirty of these at risk youths for participation in this project over the next year and a half. At the end of the Training, participants will be certified in the areas of education and training in Ceramic Arts and Life skills. It should be noted that certification will be based not only on participation in the workshops but also by evaluation of the participants’ progress under this project. It is therefore envisioned that the benefactors under the project will now be able to use these acquired knowledge and skills to become income earners by developing their own business, thus furthering entrepreneurship within the community. Additionally, given their improved employability they would now be able to access jobs inside and outside their community.