Work on the two community centres and a women’s shelter in Amelia’s Ward and Blue Berry Hill, Linden is to begin in a matter of days as the Linden Mayor and Town Council has completed the clearing of lands to facilitate construction of the buildings by the United States Air Force’s New Horizon.
Mayor of Linden, Waneka Arrindell, recently returned from the final planning conference with the New Horizon group in Arizona, USA, according to a Department of Public Information (DPI) press release. Discussions were held on the construction of the facilities along with plans for a massive two-week medical outreach programme slated for Linden in early July which will be held at the Egbert Benjamin Conference Cen-tre, the DPI release added.
The designs of the buildings were also revealed at the conference. The women’s shelter will have several private rooms, a training room, kitchen, living room, common area and an infirmary. The home is expected to have maximum security as well as a resident caretaker. The community centres will include a classroom, common area, kitchen, office, and storage areas.
The two community centres will also serve as empowerment facilities, where women and youths can engage in communal economic activities such as agro-processing. “The reason the Council chose the two communities is because Amelia’s Ward is a fast-growing community and Blue Berry Hill because of the distance from access to public transport,” Mayor Arrindell explained.
She is hoping that the shelter will not only be used as a safe home, but as an empowerment centre so the formerly abused women can leave financially, mentally and emotionally stronger.
“We will join forces with NGO’s who will give us support. So the onus is on us as a municipality to ensure that outside of being just a home, we want to provide a training centre to teach the women trades if they don’t have,” Arrindell was quoted as saying.
The mayor is calling for collaboration from all requisite stakeholders in the social arena to lend their support to making this project a holistic success. She added, “Whenever the women leave there, they must leave there fully developed, they must be able to be hired and if women are displaced with children, they must be able to move back into a setting where they can be able to survive outside of that home.”
The DPI stated that the shelter and community centres are especially needed in Linden since statistics have shown that the community ranks high in area of domestic abuse affecting both women and children. In 2017, Region Ten had been identified as the region with the highest general rate of child abuse with Linden having the most recorded cases of abuse, with neglect being the highest form followed by sexual abuse.
