After conducting its community clean up and outreach initiative in the areas of Bain Town, Kemp Road and Englerston over the last few weeks, on Friday the Urban Renewal 2.0 along with the love97’s ‘Operation Love Your Country’ took the initiative to the community of Mason’s Addition.

During Love97’s ‘Issues of The Day’ live broadcast from Mason’s Addition park, the Urban Renewal Commission Co-chair Algernon Allen said that while the programme’s ongoing effort aims to clean up the area they’re looking to achieve even more than that.

“We’re listening to the voice of the people, we are listening to them because at the end of the day we want to be able to determine how we prioritise our programme and how we inform public policy and how we can garner the input of what I call the forces of good towards our noble objective,” he said.

“It’s about the transformation of social conditions and the transformation of not only the physical invariance but the social and the human invariance and so we are touching lives as we move along,”

Urban Renewal’s Commission Co-chair Cynthia ‘Mother’ Pratt, said that despite the negative criticisms from various persons who try to discredit the work of the Urban Renewal, their work continues.

“There have been a lot of persons coming to encourage us and tell us how much they appreciate the work that we are doing and so when you hear people say that, it means that someone is paying attention and benefitting from what we’re doing,” she said.

“I don’t listen to the naysayers, I pay attention the people who are getting help and when you see a smile on a young man’s face and he can say I can feed my children today because of something Urban Renewal did, that’s what makes our day, I’m not concerned about the naysayers.”

During the clean-up, a local church donated $1,000 to the urban renewal youth band.

President of Joy International Fellowship Mathian Pratt said his church aims to move beyond the four walls and reach out to the community and assist programmes like the urban renewal.

“We want to focus on the young people and we want to get them into wholesome activities, positive activities,” he said.

“We see what they’re doing,(Urban Renewal) what they’re trying to achieve and we want to partner with them and even if we can enhance their programme and assist them we will do that because you can’t really look at anything and say you’re totally pleased with it but if you see something is headed in a positive direction you want to assist whatever it is that is going on.”

The Urban Renewal programme’s outreach will continue in the communities of Fox Hill and Montel heights over the next few weeks.