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Jamaica Day 2012

Friday, February 17

PLANNING

GUIDE

“Celebrating Jamaica: Goals for Gold”.

To:        All Principals

Re:        Jamaica Day 2012

CC:        Culture Agents

This Jamaica Day Planning Guide is designed to help you and your Culture Agent stage the best Jamaica Day Celebration.  You may adjust the proposals in keeping with the human, physical and financial resources available to your school. What is critical is that your programme of activities is in keeping with the theme.

Jamaica Day 2012 will mark the tenth anniversary of Jamaica Day in schools and the second anniversary of the official proclamation of Jamaica Day by the Governor General.  Critically, it will be our major contribution to the celebrations of Jamaica 50.

In order to help us mount activities befitting the occasion we are sending you this updated Planning Guide Please pay special attention to the programme suggestions that begin on page 9.

The CREO for your region is a member of the Jamaica Day National Planning Committee. Please work closely with that Officer in planning your activities.  I am also available to you any further   information or assistance.

Please bear in mind, that in general, this events planning guide is intended to help you achieve success in all the events hosted by your school.

Amina Blackwood Meeks

Director

Culture in Education Programme

VISION

The National Jamaica Day Planning Committee envisions a Jamaica Day 2011 in which the following are prominent features:

1. The National Flag is flown at key Ministries and Agencies of Government and national institutions.
2. The National Flag is flown by Private Sector entities at their places of businesses
3. Parents, community members and community organisations are active participants in the creation and implementation of the programme for the day
4. Private sector support for Jamaica Day is visibly improved over 2011
5. Greater Jamaican Diaspora involvement seen in activities in keeping with the theme, especially in locations where there are large numbers of Jamaican children in school
6. Synchronised reading of the Official Proclamation of Jamaica Day to be carried live on local media.
7. Proclamation of Jamaica Day to be read at all significant non-school events happening at the same time.
8. Local Media carries updates on the celebrations throughout the day
9. There is an outside broadcast of the full programme by one at least one of the radio stations

10. Extensive media participation in the activities

1. A special exhibition opens the week in which Jamaica Day falls

12. An Ecumenical Church Service is held the Sunday before Jamaica Day.

SAMPLE EVENT PLANNING LAYOUT

Establishing the Framework for the Event

Name of Event

Jamaica Day

Theme

Celebrating Jamaica: Goals for Gold

Date

Friday February 17, 2012

Description

Set out the vision for Jamaica Day at your school within the context of your interpretation of the theme

Rationale

Enunciate it, why you are having this celebration? How will it advance the overall vision for your school?

How will it enhance your School Improvement Plan?

List of Objectives (5)

What are the five objectives you wish to accomplish as a result of Jamaica Day?

To which curriculum objectives will it be attached?

Timeline for Activities

(Completion of activities for success of the event include pre Jamaica Day Activities) Set out the schedule for completing each item of planning that will ensure a successful day.

Name of executing organisation/school

Partners

Who are your critical partners within the school itself and within the wider school community?

Establishing The Work Teams

The following teams/committees should be in place to facilitate the most efficient planning process. Clearly indentify the team leader and ensure that all teams understand their responsibility.

Involve the widest cross-section of staff and school community in the plan.

Have a dress rehearsal where possible as you will need to encourage staff to remain at their station on the day for the event to be successful

Administrative

This team should include the Principal or the Principal’s representative.  It receives all proposals, including the budget, and gives them the stamp of approval on the timeline for completing activities and supports other teams in meeting their deadlines.

Leader -

Members          

Artistic

Has the responsibility for all programme details including the physical layout of the grounds for the day, décor, the content and order of the programme, confirmation of participants.

Leader -

          Members          

Technical

Provides support in the following areas: construction of the stage, sound and light, stage management. Relates closely with  Artistic Team.

Leader -

          Members          

Food and Beverage

Ensures that adequate supplies of refreshment are available for the total number of guests and participants.  Decide if these are to be sold and at what cost.  Work with the Artistic Department to secure best location for food and beverage.  Assign someone to collaborate with the Public Relations Department to extend the best hospitality to the Guest Speaker and other special guests.

Leader -

          Members          

 Public Relations/Protocol

Ensures that all stakeholders and partners are adequately informed of the event.  Confirms participation including numbers.  Provides email with correct names and numbers of special guests. Provides chairperson for Jamaica Day with brief notes on speakers and any other guest to be publicly introduced, including performers.

Ensures that guests are met, greeted, correctly seated and addressed and escorts them out of function at the close.

(If resources permit, separate your PR and Protocol work teams.)

Leader -

          Members          

Marketing

Receives budgets from all other teams. Sources funds and/or other donations as required. Closely consults with Administrative team and ensures that all other teams stay within budget.

Leader -

          Members          

Maintenance

Prepares grounds in consultation with artistic team.  Ensures that grounds are properly maintained throughout the event and all clean up is effected immediately after the event.  Collaborates with other teams to ensure the return of items such as the Public Address System, chairs, and tents as appropriate.

Leader -

          Members          

Clean up Team

This team is critical. Members ensure clean up as an-ongoing process during the event and completes the job as soon as possible after the event.

Leader-

Members

Documentation

Ensures that the event is properly documented and reports prepared

Leader -

          Members          

Other

Establish any other team(s) as required by your own individual circumstances.

Leader -

          Members          

Partners

Who will be your main partners? List the organisation as well as the link person to each organisation. Ensures that partners clearly understand what is expected of them.

Detailed Budget

Please calculate the cost of anything that was donated. Indicate that the service this year was free but might need to be funded in subsequent years.

Activities

Consider the scope of your activities and whether you are able t support these activities logistically. For example, is it to be a week-long celebration that culminates on Jamaica Day itself? Will other schools and groups be invited to participate with you?  Make a list of all activities that will form your programme for the day.  Time each activity and include an estimate of the transition time from one activity to the next. Remember a successful event begins and ends on time

Evaluation

(Do a post evaluation of the event. It should include any new skills, talents, resources that were unearthed during the process of planning and implementation. Record the evaluation as part of the memory of your institution as well as a guide for subsequent events).

PROGRAMME GUIDELINE

Reminder - your Jamaica Day Celebration may be as elaborate or as simple as your budget allows.  Plan to include the communities (social and business) as much as possible.

 SAMPLE TEMPLATES FOR PLANNING JAMAICA DAY

SAMPLE PROGRAMME TEMPLATES FOR JAMAICA DAY 2012

The following programme templates were developed by the Jamaica Day National Planning Committee. Please feel free to adapt these to suit your own situation, to take ideas from them to enhance your plans. They are not prescriptive or exhaustive. It is however, of critical importance that your plans be guided by the theme. In this way we avoid mounting the same activities every year and thus make full use of the opportunity provided by Jamaica Day to expose our students to the rich variety of positive elements of our society, advance different areas of the curriculum and emphasise different aspects of citizenship.

Exploring the theme.

“Celebrating Jamaica: Goals for Gold”  is  a call to centre students in the tradition of accomplishments that help to make Jamaica unique, to appreciate the importance of looking back in order to move forward, while being thankful for the present. Use the theme to guide the development of programmes and activities that will encourage reflections on the positive developments in the fifty years under consideration and promote goal-setting and personal responsibility for the fifty years to come.

Connecting past and future:

At one level, students should be facilitated to focus on those accomplishments that could be awarded a gold as well as those goals, which if realised in the future should also receive gold. This is an exercise in goal-setting which requires the students to  vision Jamaica in fifty years time, the contribution of their schools to realising that vision and therefore locate themselves and their performance as critical to the attainment of that vision. These might examine such issues as food security, water preservation and energy conservation.

 Jamaica Day Legacy

Identify the outcome you wish for your school. Consider a new project for the that will benefit the nation, particularly in the area of documentation of the local history.

It is recommended that programmes  be developed using one or any combination of the following: The Institutions, Critical Areas of Public Life, The People,  Runners and Forerunners

INSTITUTIONS

Institutions may be tangible or tangible, social, political or cultural. Exploration and programme development may be guided by these questions:-

• What is it?
• What are its objectives?
• What was before its present form?
• What are its accomplishments?
• Who have been its beneficiaries?      
• How has it changed lives/served the disadvantaged?
• Is there any specific contribution to regional development?

Some institutions that could be considered are:

• Parish Markets: meeting place of the social classes. (Coronation, Charles Gordon, Linstead, Solas etc)
• Hospitals
• Churches
• Edna Manley School of the Visual and Performing Arts
•  Father Holung and Friends
• Alpha Boys Home
• Women’s Centre
• Male Desk
• Reformatory Schools (today’s name vs. yesteryear)
• Partner, as an important banking institution to the poor
• Industry - Sugar, banana, tourism

Can your school identify any CARICOM office in Jamaica? How about a regional artist/performer was trained at Enda Manley College?

CRITICAL AREAS OF PUBLIC LIFE.

The intention is to examine those areas of public life, formal or informal, that have impacted our understanding of on nation-building. Questions that may guide selection include

• Can we imagine life without it?
• Who are the unsung heroes in these areas?
• What is my responsibility to its maintainance?

Some critical areas to consider:

• Order in public places
• Food in public places
• Free day care caregivers
• ‘Veranda’ school to basic school 
• Farming – parishes and food
• Road work   
• Transportation  (from train stations to bus stations)
• The post office
• Old time midwives
• Traditions that maintain community spirit ( day-fe-day work, weddings, nine nights, christenings, funerals etc)

Could you organise a field trip to any of the train stations or have your students locate the train stations from Kingston to Montego Bay on a map?

What is the location of the first post office in Jamaica?

The People

Some guiding questions are

• Who are the people who have made a significant contributions to country and or community who have remained unheralded?
• What has been their contribution?
• How do their contributions help us to maintain our humanness?

Some possible candidates

• The person who raised the Jamaica Flag for the first time in 1962
• Founders and Principals
• Ancillary staff at specified institutions
• Midwives
• Outstanding Singers, Writers, Wives, Husbands, Sons, Daughters
• Public servants ( longest working civil servant, midwife, postman, etc in your community)

What are the duties of a midwife? Is there a midwife still living in your community?

RUNNERS AND FORERUNNERS –

Under this heading schools are encouraged to undertake work that recognises the pioneers on whose foundation accomplishments were made possible in the last fifty years.

 Some areas include:

• Arts and Sciences
•  Education
• Sports

What is the function of the Culture Agent?

What was the first sporting event held at the National Stadium?                                                                                                     

ADD LOCAL FLAVOUR

Use information that is unique to your school or your school community to add special flavour to your Jamaica Day Celebrations, especially if it helps you to interpret the theme.

Here are some ways to do that.

• When determining what dishes will be served on the day, serve the first Principal’s favourite Jamaican meal or the dish most often served at the canteen
• Ask the mother’s from the PTA to design the decorations for the day in keeping with the theme
• Use what is special about the name of your community. There is a great legacy in names such as TrySee, Grateful Hill, Heart Ease, Rest and Be Thankful, Unity, Welcome, Friendship, Independence City, Far Enough, Put Together Corner, Time and Patience, Wai-A-Bit. (Expand the list)

Remember:

• Protocols
• Volunteers meeting
• Permits if any are needed, including permission from parents
• A successful event begins and ends on time. Make a list of all the activities that will form part of your programme for the day. Carefully time each one and estimate the transition time required to move from one item to the next.

Some possible partners

• The Business Community
• Government agencies (JAMPRO, RADA, SDC, JCDC, Jamaica 4H etc)
• Parish Councils
• Airports
• Uniform Groups ( Girls Guide, Pathfinders etc)
• The hospitality industry
• Community groups and organisations
• Faith-based groups and organisations