Monthly Featured Project

PREPAREDNESS AND EMERGENCY RESPONSE CORPS (PERC)

 

 

 

 

The Preparedness and Emergency Response Corp (“PERC”) Project is essentially a youth targeted programme which seeks to train young men and women between the ages of 18 – 25 years. The programme seeks to harness the tremendous energy, spirit and sense of service that resides in our youth in order to bolster community based resources for risk management; responding to emergencies and recovering from disasters.  The “PERC” Project is an open programme, based on volunteerism. These young persons will be drawn from the ninth to twelfth grades within the secondary school system and youths under the age of 25 years within community groups or tertiary institutions.

 

The programme is desirous of having those young persons (attached to secondary schools), support their individual School Safety Programme and ultimately advance the Disaster Risk Reduction principles. In addition to strengthening the community based risk management and response capacity, it is aimed at advancing the spirit of volunteerism and nationalism within our youth. Recruitment to the programme is ongoing and persons are able to volunteer for training at any time.

So far, approximately 400 young persons (ages 15 – 25), from 10 parishes (St. Ann, St. Mary, St. Thomas, Portland, Hanover, St. Catherine, Kingston and St. Andrew, St. James and Westmoreland) have been trained and incorporated in the PERC programme. These young persons were selected from institutions and organizations such as secondary schools and the Jamaica Cadet Corps,. Participants were trained in Incident Command, First Aid, Basic Disaster Management, Search and Rescue and Damage Assessment. The PERC programme is a national programme of the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM), which has the potential of garnering the spirit of volunteerism and responsibility to country, among our young persons. The Jamaica Social Investment Fund has been pleased to contribute significantly to the development of this new programme and has so far provided funding for  272 youths from our secondary schools, to be trained as First Responders, and an additional 250 community persons are targeted for training.

 

 PERC participant awarded by the Prime Minister.


As a national programme, PERC will require continued support from the Government of Jamaica, the various international funding agencies, as well as the private sector. In addition to the World Bank, a number of international funding agencies have made commitments to the programme.