HELLO MI NEIGHBOUR | Touch our conscience, Lord

Hello, mi neighbour! What positive role are you playing in the lives of others? Is the well-being of our neighbours of any significance to us? How are we contributing to the constant abuse, especially of our young ones? Are we our brother’s keeper? Are we training our children “in the way that they should go”? Are we “sparing the rod and spoiling the child”? Any idea of how many children went to bed unfed last night, or how many more will suffer a similar fate tonight? No idea eeh?

Could the food we are dumping today have saved a life or two yesterday? How do you feel about that? Well, if you are a real human being with all your faculties intact, you should be quite disquieted in your mind and vowing to help to address the needs of others. Touch our conscience, Lord.

Before you proceed, please listen to this news item: a St Elizabeth family is demanding justice after their relative, 14-year-old Jaheim Colman, was beaten unconscious, allegedly by a grade 11 student, for stepping on a pair of Clarks shoes, and had to be moved on foot by his schoolmates from BB Coke High to a doctor’s office about 500 metres away.

The incident, which happened recently, has generated widespread debate on violence in schools. It prompted emergency meetings with school administrators, the police, and Ministry of Education officials at the Junction-based school.

Colman’s mother, Shantel Gouldbourne, is demanding that her son’s aggressor face the necessary punishment from not only the school but also the law.

How sad. And now there is a public outcry. And rightly so. As the politicians and other well-thinking Jamaicans would say, “all well-thinking Jamaicans must condemn this barbarism in our schools, and this should not be allowed to happen again!” Now that this brutality has been duly condemned by well-thinking Jamaicans, what now? Will the majority sit by and await another incident of similar savagery to occur and then once again make an outcry? Dat mek sense to yuh?

The mother of the child says “I need justice. I need [the student] to get punished because I could stay anywhere and hear that my son died at the school. I need the school to deal with it. I need the law to deal with it. I need this to go to the Ministry of Education.” Will the punishment of the ‘perpeTRAITOR’ ease this mother’s pain and stop her ‘eye water’? Guess it might, to an extent. We continue to pray for her, and, while we are at it, remember the other family.

So, in retrospect, I wondered if there was any thing that I could have personally done to prevent this incident. Well, I know that there are

· School rules

· Devotion in schools

· Guidance counsellors

· Motivational talks

· Special prayers

· Parent/teachers meetings etc.

Then there are extra-curricular activities like:

· Painting

· Art club

· Graphic design

· Drama club

· Dancing

· Singing

· Animation, etc.

Shouldn’t all the above, coupled with academia help to ‘round out’ each child, thus helping him/her to become less cruel? Thanks to those boys who, by their humanitarian spirit, assisted Jaheim Colman to the doctor’s office.

So, to come back to my question, was there anything that I could have personally done to prevent this incident? Good question. The question now is, what will I now personally do to reduce violence in schools? As I await the answer, I must affirm ‘the safety of every child is my responsibility’ until it becomes a reality.

This affirmation, repeated often, can help us to break free from limiting beliefs and wire our brain to accept it as truth as each of us take on the responsibility of caring for Jamaica’s children. Are we ready? Of course! On your mark, get set, GO!: ‘The safety of every child is my responsibility!” Again … !

WE ASK YOU AGAIN TO HELP US HELP A NEIGHBOUR WITH ITEMS BELOW:

1. Stove, bed, mattress, building materials, sewing machine, table, chairs, second-hand settee, etc.

To help, please call Silton Townsend at 876 884-3866, or deposit in acct # 351 044 276 NCB. Alternatively, send donations to Hello Neighbour C/o 53 Half-Way Tree Road, Kingston 10; Paypal/credit card: email: zicron22@yahoo.com. Contact email: helloneighbour@yahoo.com. Visit hellomineighbourja.blogspot.com. Townsend exclusively manages the collections and distributions mentioned in this column and is neither an employee nor agent of The Gleaner.