By Avia Ustanny, Gleaner Writer 
Kevin Brown with students from the McIntyre Lands community summer camp, 1999.
KEVIN WALKS with a confident stride, greeting with arms outstretched and the mellifluous voice that could belong either to a lawyer, or a radio personality. It's his birthday, November 4, and he is smiling. He is 27 years old.
You would never know, from that confident stride, that scattered in his body, are the pellets from a gun.
He is attired for the day of business. With our local prejudices, you would never guess that each morning he leaves from McIntyre Land, on his way to air-conditioned work space in the Ministry of Commerce, Science and Technology, where he is web programmer.
Kevin Brown, the winner of the 2003 Musgrave Youth Award (Silver Medal) for Eminence in Community Development is also the youngest JP on roll in the island is a resident of McIntyre Land, a place where others do not want to go, but which he has no intention of leaving.
McIntyre Land (Dunkirk) in Kingston is classified as a depressed community, where the vast majority of residents live on the knife edge of poverty and caught, at least up until six years ago, in a spiral of violent conflict with nearby communities.
In this same community (ironically), two of his brothers were shot and killed. For another kind of human being, that would have been a push factor, but not for Kevin. One brother died following a conflict with another member of the community. The other brother, also a teenager, was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was killed during a community feud.
The only son left
Kevin is the only son left in what was once a family of three girls and three boys. He himself was shot while playing cricket in an empty lot near to his home. Again, he was caught in crossfire, during a feud. Luckily, he says, the shots were pellets, not bullets. They are still lodged in his hip.
But, in the last six years, peace has prevailed, and fewer shots have been fired in conflict. Kevin Brown is a part of the reason for this. His life is centred around community development.
Apart from being the president of the McIntyre Villa Youth Club, Brown is the public relations officer of the McIntyre Villa Citizens' Association.
At age 27, he is the youngest Justice of the Peace in Jamaica. He was sworn in as a JP at age 25 years old, also making him the 2nd youngest person to be sworn in. The youngest was Sir Clifford Campbell, who was sworn in at age 24 years.
Brown is also the secretary of the Lay Magistrate's Association, Kingston Chapter, after being elected in 2002.
Indeed, his achievements for such a young man are legion. He is most concerned, however, with what is being done in McIntyre Lands. The catalyst for change followed the death, several years ago, of two brothers who were shot to death while eating a mango. Then a student of Camperdown High School, Brown joined up with others to create the youth club. There followed a number of activities that have "transformed the negative energy into a positive one," he asserts.
Brown has been the director for the community's summer camp since its inception in 1999 and he has been teaching, voluntarily, Saturday and Sunday classes to the community's children and adults, in information technology.
He is also a director of the Community Centre's Computer School, using his skills to do more than earn himself money.
Brown is also an instructor trainer with the Jamaica Red Cross Society's 'Together We Can HIV/STI Prevention Education Programme'. Since 1998 he has been working with community youth groups and other organisations to educate their members on HIV/AIDS prevention.
He was the first president of the Eastern Kingston Child Protection Council, on which he still serves as an executive member, and was instrumental in organising and implementing several workshops on Child Protection and Child Rights.
Announcer and programmer
In 1998, his was the first inner-city voice on Jamaica's first inner-city Community Commercial Radio Station, Roots 96.1 FM, and apart from being host of a youth programme 'Yout and Yout', he served as an announcer and programmer for the station.
When he was at Camperdown High School, he was (and still is) the only head boy who was not a prefect in 5th Form. When he became head prefect, he also headed the community outreach programme, to Bellevue Hospital and the Grade 7 Tribunal.
After graduation from Camperdown High School, Brown studied in India, at the National Institute of Information Technology (NIIT) in 1999, doing a course in Advance Network Programming. He is also a graduate of the Caribbean Institute of Technology (Kingston).
He remembers nights spent learning lines of code, at home, while the dance hall music slammed nearby. It was hard to resist, but he did.
Soon, he will continue his education. It is a toss up between law and computers. Meanwhile, his focus continues to be on more community activism.
Kevin Brown was recently selected (March 2003) as Jamaica's representative to South Korea on the Development Gateway Foundation's course on Voice over Internet Protocol (VIP). He was Jamaica's youth representative to the United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on HIV/AIDS held at the United Nations in New York in June 2001.
He was also one of Jamaica's Representatives to St. Vincent and the Grenadines in 1999 to participate in the Caribbean's Initiative on ways in which the media can stem the growing prevalence in HIV/AIDS cases.
He also serves on the National Copyright Tribunal for the 4th straight year and is a five-year board member of Dunoon Park Technical High School Board. He served on the boards of Camperdown and Vauxhall High schools for three years.
For us today, Brown smiles and protests the possibility of ever leaving home - McIntyre Land, where it all began.
"I have never been away from home, never been away for more than six weeks and that was when I did the course in India. I love it there. It may be lack of exposure... I don't know."
McIntyre Land is where all his family lives and has lived for generations. His mother, father, grandmother and cousins still reside there.
"The people are friendly and warm and comical at times. I am not sure, but I have been to other countries and even other areas of Jamaica and they do not have this. Here, everyone knows my name."
