Trudy Simpson, Staff Reporter
The Rural Family Support Organisation
In May the Rural Family Support Organisation (Rufamso) beat out a list of agencies from around the world to win the United Nations Children's Fund most prestigious award.
The Clarendon-based organisation took the Maurice Pate Award for its outstanding work with rural area adolescents. This is the second in a two-part series on Rufamso. Part one appeared in Saturday's Gleaner.
BORN IN 1986 as the Teenage Mother Support Project, the agency has evolved into its present mandate of providing extensive skills training and family life programmes for teenage mothers and fathers, as well as other adolescent school drop-outs.
Ophelia Allison is one such student. The 19-year-old is part of Rufamso's central programme which operates from the Denbigh Agricultural Show Ground, in Clarendon. She attends classes in garment construction and was recently focusing on upcoming HEART/NTA garment exams.
"I got involved in the programme because my parents couldn't afford to send me to high school and also to get myself a skill so I can move onto my goals in life," she said. "So far, I've learned good interpersonal skills and that life doesn't stop because my parents couldn't afford to send me to school."
Ophelia, who wants to be a fashion designer, said prior to this she sat at home for a year feeling depressed until her mother encouraged her to try the programme.
"They received me like family and the teachers really sit down and talk to you when you are feeling down," she said. "Everyday I thank God that my mother encouraged me and sent me here."
Rufamso's Executive Director Joyce Jarrett noted that getting adolescents, other than teen mothers, involved is also part of the agency's prevention programme.
Rufamso, she said, was working with nine schools through their counselling programmes, to family life education in the lower grades to stem the tide of drop-outs.
Still, she said, "we need to do more within the school system, in the counselling and guidance areas where we can have more one-to-one relationships with the counsellor and the student."
She added that there was also a need to strengthen the home "by helping the mothers to understand the adolescent period. What our research has shown is that many girls get pregnant within a very poor parent-adolescent relationship."
Rufamso also works with public health clinics, the church, police and civic organisations.
"No one organisation can ever attempt to address the tremendous problems we have out there with children and homes and no one organisation can have all the funds to do all the areas so networking with other organisations is important," said Mrs. Jarrett.
Rufamso which has a few barriers in terms of broadening its programmes, is about to get help from the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF).
JSIF has promised land to construct a new building which is to be located at Brooks Avenue in Clarendon. The new facility is expected to house Rufamso projects which are currently scattered in various locations and allow it to widen its scope.
"We're now just at the tip of the iceberg," said Mrs. Jarrett.
