The Barbados Vagrants and Homeless Society (BVHS) is reporting a major area of accomplishment – that of obtaining success in the area of job placements for qualified clients.
President of the BVHS, Kemar Saffrey, revealed the above in a recent interview with The Barbados Advocate as he reflected on the year 2017.
“We have been 100% successful in job placements this year. A lot of our qualified clients were able to be employed. And I say ‘qualified clients’ because I don’t want people to go with
the perception that because somebody is homeless, that they can feel that they will come and get a job. The ones that go through our programmes, that have stood the test of time
and successfully passed what was implemented, they would have been able to get gainful employment,” Saffrey explained.
“We had a few clients and they would have obviously gone through rehabilitation and reintegration programmes – whether through one of our partners such as Verdun House or the Psychiatric Hospital – and they would have come to us and we would have given them a rigorous three to six months programme. That would include how to maintain a job,
developing coping skills, financial management etc. and then we would seek out jobs for them. Most of the time people would call us for employment for them,” the BVHS President said.
“So that was something huge on our part – even though the economy was the not the best, we were still able to successfully aid with employment, through our partnership obviously, with some great companies,” he further stated.
Saffrey highlighted that the BVHS clients were able to obtain jobs in the construction sector and in areas such as security, porter services, handyman services and as general workers.