It aimed to retrain displaced workers and farmers in the banana/plantain industry and those whose jobs may disappear because of loss of preferential treatment in the European market.
It did not provide jobs directly for people and was not used to influence changes to the banana/plantain sector, but its findings and outcomes were intended to help inform and develop a larger scale programme of assistance to workers in Jamaica's banana/plantain communities.
What they learnt and the experiences of participants in the project were intended also to help inform the design of training and certification programmes to be implemented by HEART Trust/NTA[1] (and/or other institutions) in the future.
People dependent on the banana/plantain producing industry: Workshops featured career counselling, motivational speeches and try-a-skill exercises where participants got a taste of skills such as housekeeping, construction and agricultural applications.
ICT enabled remedial training programmes comprising WordCraft – reading and writing, and MathCraft – grades 1–9 were conducted over a six-month period.