The Joy Town Community Development Foundation (JTCDF) is a non-profit, non-governmental organization which was founded by Major Richard Cooke and Pastor Bobby Wilmot in 2001. It is incorporated for the specific purpose of aiding community development in Trench Town and its environs. The organization is energized by prayer to bring about positive attitudes of hope, joy and peace in the community.
Strategic Objectives
Value Statements
In order to fulfill the mission and realise the vision of a transformed community, the JTCDF has recognised four major thematic areas which must be addressed simultaneously in order for anyone of them to be successfully dealt with.
There has to be a poverty alleviation strategy initially through financial assistance, strongly supported by initiatives to stimulate sustainable economic activity. Concomitantly, measures must be taken to significantly improve existing education offerings and provide new and appropriate opportunities. A critical component supplementary to any education and training is a healthy lifestyle and life skills programme, inculcating wholesome values and attitudes and promoting effective parenting skills. There can be no sustainable interventions in any of the inner-city communities without an effective strategy for significant violence reduction leading to sustainable violence prevention.
The JTCDF recognises that it will require the collaboration of most if not all of the government agencies, community-based organisations, non-governmental organisations and other stake holders in Trench Town to successfully address all four thematic areas, at once. Collaboration and also the facilitation of service entities enabling them to effectively bring their services to the community will, therefore, be a major part of the JTCDF’s agenda.
Because of the long term nature of the mission, the Foundation will institute programmes appropriate for each stage of the process, but when at all possible, these programmes will be executed as a series of discrete but inter-linked projects.