Beyond ‘Red Light, Yellow Light, Pepper Light’

WESTERN BUREAU:

Young Jamaicans are being challenged to look beyond Red Light, Yellow Light, Pepper Light hype and use the Internet to find scholarships, learn skills, and pursue opportunities capable of changing their lives.

Clive Harris, group technical manager at Rainforest Caribbean, issued the challenge to scholarship recipients recently, arguing that today’s young people have access to a powerful resource that was not readily available to him while growing up.

“You readily have access to something I didn’t have growing up, which is the Internet,” Harris said.

“Don’t use it only for Red Light, Yellow Light, Pepper Light.,” he said referring a viral song created in the wake of a pepper-spraying incident that is especially popular on social media. “Use it to change your life. Learn a skill, find opportunities, read, ask questions and follow persons who inspire you. Use it for more than just entertainment.”

Harris knows something about searching for opportunities.

Raised in Bellfield, St Mary, as the fourth of five children in a single-parent household, he said financial difficulties could easily have derailed his education.

His mother, a domestic helper, struggled at times to provide even the basics.

Back-to-school periods were particularly difficult, forcing Harris to preserve his uniforms and schoolbag so they could last longer, reuse notebooks and copy pages from textbooks he could not afford.

There were also days when his mother could provide only bus fare, leaving him to seek lunch assistance through the Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH).

At other times, he could not attend school.

Still, Harris said he refused to allow his circumstances to dictate his academic performance.

One of the most critical interventions came when he was preparing to sit eight Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) subjects and his family could not find the approximately $30,000 required to cover the examinations not being paid for by the Government.

Help came unexpectedly from a post office attendant in his community who offered to pay his examination fees.

Harris said he had simply been courteous to the woman during his regular encounters with her and had no idea she had been observing him.

Be respectful

The experience, he said, taught him a lesson he continues to carry.

“Be respectful to everyone. You never know who is watching, you never know whose life you will touch, and you never know who may be in a position to help you one day.”

Harris went on to become a top CSEC student and later a top Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations (CAPE) student at St Mary High School.

But another financial hurdle emerged when he was accepted to The University of the West Indies.

With his family unable to finance his studies, Harris turned to the Internet, searching extensively for scholarships and grants.

That search led him to the NCB Foundation scholarship programme.

Even after being shortlisted, however, he nearly defeated himself before entering the interview room.

The other two candidates were his school’s head boy and deputy head boy – students he respected and believed were smarter and more accomplished than he was.

Harris began questioning whether he belonged there.

He ultimately decided he had been shortlisted for a reason, went through the interview and was selected as the St Mary parish champion.

“Don’t disqualify yourself before someone else even gets the chance to consider you,” he told the scholarship recipients.

“Believe that you belong in that room.”

Still needed help

He also secured a loan after finding two guarantors just one day before the Students’ Loan Bureau’s application deadline.

Even with the scholarship and loan, however, Harris still needed help with transportation, food and other expenses.

He sought assistance from the university’s student welfare office and worked in a computer laboratory for three years while completing his studies.

He graduated with first-class honours.

Harris later used earnings from the overseas work-and-travel programme to repay his student loan in full, keeping a promise he had made to the two people who agreed to guarantee it.

His next major educational move required another calculated gamble.

After being accepted to the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom with a partial scholarship, Harris was left to find approximately £12,000 approximately J$2.2 million, to cover the remaining tuition.

Rather than abandon the opportunity, he returned to the work-and-travel programme and earned approximately half of what he needed.

He went to Britain anyway, found a job and worked his way through the programme, eventually earning his master’s degree with distinction.

After returning to Jamaica, Harris worked at Island Grill before joining Rainforest, where he eventually rose to group technical manager.

He told the scholarship recipients that his journey was proof that financial circumstances at the beginning of a young person’s life do not have to determine where that person ends up.

“Where you start is not where you will end,” Harris said.

“You don’t need to have everything figured out now. You just need to believe in yourself enough to take the next step, and never allow your circumstances to convince you that your future is limited.”

He challenged the scholarship recipients to eventually become the people who extend opportunities to another generation.

“I am standing here today because people did that for me,” Harris said. “People believed in me along the way until I could believe in myself.”

And among those sitting before him, he predicted, were “tomorrow’s doctors, engineers, lawyers, CEOs, and even scholarship donors”.

janet.silvera@gleanerjm.com