Trudy Simpson, Staff Reporter
This group, comprising of teen mothers and their own mothers, shows the hard work and patience that goes into churning out embroidered products. Embroidery is one of the skills taught by the Rural Family Support Organisation (Rufamso) which, in May, won the United Nations Children's Fund highest award, the Maurice Pate Award, for its work with rural adolescents. It topped organisations from Africa, Europe, Asia and the Middle East to take the prestigious prize.
"IT SEEMED like the world had closed on me," said Marva Cunningham, describing how she felt when she learned she was pregnant.
That was 1986 and she was 15, a far different person from the confident woman who quietly related her tale at the Terra Nova Hotel in St. Andrew, recently. With a quick look at her 13-year-old son, Andre and a soft smile, Miss Cunningham continued her story.
She said her parents were upset, reckoning that they had wasted their money sending her to school. They said "I was no good and that I should go and find the person who did this."
The problem was that her son's father had migrated and hadn't kept in touch.
Instead of ending up a reject, Miss Cunningham managed to pull her life together with the help of the Teenage Mother Project (TMP) which started the year she got pregnant. She heard about the project from a nurse at the clinic.
"I was devastated and they reassured me that life goes on," said Miss Cunningham, now a police officer at the Lucea Police Station in Hanover and is on the verge of graduating from the University of Technology (UTech).
Established to help teenage mothers and reduce teenage pregnancy in Clarendon, TMP has since evolved into the Rural Family Support Organisation (Rufamso) which is garnering praise for its work with adolescents. In May, Rufamso was recognised for its work, winning the United Nations Children's Fund's highest award, the Maurice Pate Award. It topped organisations from countries around the world.
Well done
"It is really a recognition of work that is well done," said Executive Director of Rufamso, Joyce Jarrett, who described the organisation's delight at being selected above nominations from Africa, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
"The fact that we were selected from a number of other international agencies is really an indication that we are doing some things which are quite right for the young people."
The Clarendon-based programme assists teenaged mothers and mothers-to-be with academic training, counselling and child care education. Their babies are placed in a stimulating day care environment supervised by trained caregivers through the Daycare Programme /Roving Caregivers Programme.
This was evident when The Gleaner arrived in the small community of Long Wood, one Tuesday morning in June to find Rufamso's Co-ordinator for the Roving Caregivers Programme, Utelia Burrell, and Project Officer for southern Clarendon, Eda Golding, counselling four teenagers.
"You need to be conscious of the fact that every action has its consequence and if you become sexually active, you may become pregnant," Mrs. Burrell was saying.
The teens, one holding a two-month-old baby, were seated beneath a tree and appeared to be listening keenly.
In another area, teen mothers and their parents were embroidering bright patterns.
"When we try to help children, we don't want to help them in isolation. We also want to help their parents," Mrs. Golding said. The parents of teens in circumstances similar to Miss Cunningham's also benefit from some of Rufamso's skills training programmes, she said. Many of these parents, she noted, are unemployed or only have seasonal work on sugar estates.
While the teenage mothers embroidered, their children were being cared for in another section by caregivers, Shawnette Gooden and Rimosa Morgan, who captured their attention using Rufamso-made cloth balls painted in primary colours, puppets, blocks, drawings made from cardboard and rattles made from fanta bottles, stones and sticks. These, Mrs Golding pointed out, help to develop their muscles and learning ability.
Since its inception in 1994, the Roving Caregivers programme has reached 750 children between birth and age three in 250 homes each year.
Helping girls
In addition to helping girls and young women, the organisation has broadened its scope to include young males -- some of them teenaged fathers -- in its Male Adolescent Skills Training programme.
About 250 young men have benefited so far from the skills training programme, which has grown from 21 students initially to more than 70 per year.
"Now I know about measurement and my reading improve and if you take a picture, I can build you a frame," said 17-year-old Sherwayne McLean who is learning woodwork and family life -- the latter a priority at Rufamso.
"And we learn for instance that if you mek a girl pregnant, you don't run away and leave her, you must stay with her and help care for the baby."
Sherwayne added that the programme also taught him to "show respect to a girl. Calling a girl a name because she don't come to you when you call her - that's wrong," he said.
School drop-outs
Rufamso also nurtures the United States Agency for International Development's (USAID), Uplifting Adolescent Programme (UAP) which allows school drop-outs to re-enter the public school system through a Literacy and Remedial Education Programme.
"We did academics and CXC (examinations) so we went back into the school system," said Donna Cameron who got pregnant at 17. "If it wasn't for the programme, maybe I'd have to stay home and do something else but the programme has helped me to realise that I can move on though I had a brief stop, so to speak."
Today, Miss Cameron is a graduate of St. Joseph's Teachers' College and teaches at York Town Primary in Clarendon.
Miss Cunningham agreed, adding that Rufamso "helped me to become who I am today (by) helping me to regain my self-worth and to find my inner strength."
For part two of the Rural Family Support Organisation story watch for The Gleaner on Monday.
