The La Brea Po­lice Youth Club is com­mit­ted to build agro-pre­neurs among the youth in their com­mu­ni­ty.

The south-based group re­cent­ly re­ceived $100,000 from the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion to im­ple­ment an agri­cul­tur­al project to pre­pare youth for op­por­tu­ni­ties to gen­er­ate an in­come through grow­ing their own food.

Over 30 young per­sons from the New Lands, La Brea com­mu­ni­ty are ex­pect­ed to be in­volved in the project which will fo­cus on de­vel­op­ing hor­i­zon­tal and ver­ti­cal hy­dro­pon­ic units, and grow box­es.

Youth will be trained on the new agri­cul­ture prac­tices and how to care for the pro­duce while us­ing tra­di­tion­al meth­ods and hy­dro­pon­ics tech­nol­o­gy. The sys­tems will al­so be au­to­mat­ed to boost ef­fi­cien­cy. The Po­lice Youth Club is al­so ex­plor­ing in­cor­po­rat­ing so­lar en­er­gy in­to their farm­ing project.

The La Brea Po­lice Youth Club will al­so in­clude rain wa­ter har­vest­ing as part of its thrust to make the com­mu­ni­ty project self-suf­fi­cient, sus­tain­able and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly re­spon­si­ble. Don­ald Baldeosingh, pres­i­dent of The Car­bon Ze­ro In­sti­tute (CZITT) has stepped for­ward and has been lend­ing tech­ni­cal ad­vice to the team.

Leader of the La Brea Po­lice Youth Club WPC Jas­mine Vesprey-David shared, “The youth will be en­gaged in this project learn­ing about the tra­di­tion­al grow box­es to the so­lar pow­ered hy­dro­pon­ics sys­tem. It will af­ford them with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be­come agro–pre­neurs. She added, “This will have a long last­ing im­pact on their lives.”

Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion op­er­a­tions man­ag­er Cindyann Cur­ren­cy paid a site vis­it at the south project last week and shared, “It’s been a while since we’ve been to La Brea so we’re elat­ed to sup­port this ini­tia­tive. Food Se­cu­ri­ty con­tin­ues to be a grow­ing con­cern and any project that ad­dress­es this ba­sic need cou­pled with train­ing and rev­enue earn­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for young peo­ple, is ex­act­ly the kind of trans­for­ma­tive in­ter­ven­tion we want to align our­selves with.”

The Po­lice Youth Club has 12 weeks to im­ple­ment the project. The group has re­ceived per­mis­sion from the Na­tion­al Her­itage Trust to place the project at the old Mag­is­trates’ Quar­ters.

Over 30 young persons from the New Lands, La Brea community are expected to be involved in executing the project at the old Magistrates’ Quarters which will focus on developing horizontal and vertical hydroponic units, and grow boxes.