Wes­ley Gib­bings

As has now be­come cus­tom­ary, Ma­yaro-based com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist Oliv­er Alexan­der was up and about ear­ly last Mon­day, the first day of the new school year, check­ing on trans­porta­tion arrange­ments for stu­dents mak­ing their way to the area’s eight schools.

The Sat­ur­day be­fore, he had led the dis­tri­b­u­tion of mon­e­tary awards to suc­cess­ful stu­dents head­ing to new in­sti­tu­tions. Pop­u­lar events pro­mo­tion and en­ter­tain­ment com­pa­ny Is­land Crash­ers Ltd al­so joined the ef­fort, con­tribut­ing 25 school ham­pers.

Speak­ing at the dis­tri­b­u­tion cer­e­mo­ny at the Ma­yaro Re­source Cen­tre, Alexan­der, chair­man of the Ma­yaro Past Pupils As­so­ci­a­tion (MP­PA), said he was con­cerned that the com­mu­ni­ty’s so­cial en­vi­ron­ment was not con­tribut­ing suf­fi­cient­ly to stu­dents’ aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess.

He point­ed to the six pri­ma­ry and two sec­ondary schools serv­ing the area and ques­tioned ex­am­i­na­tion out­comes which, al­though im­prov­ing mar­gin­al­ly, con­tin­ued to lag be­hind ex­pec­ta­tions.

Alexan­der ar­gued that the com­mu­ni­ty could not af­ford to tell chil­dren they were fail­ures sim­ply be­cause they strug­gled with­in the ex­ist­ing sys­tem.

“As a com­mu­ni­ty, we have to look at our­selves as re­al­ly every, every sin­gle per­son in the com­mu­ni­ty,” he said.

That re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, in his view, in­cludes prac­ti­cal in­ter­ven­tions such as help­ing chil­dren with trans­porta­tion, iden­ti­fy­ing young­sters who re­quire ad­di­tion­al sup­port and cre­at­ing pro­grammes that ex­pose them to op­por­tu­ni­ties be­yond the con­ven­tion­al class­room.

Is­land Crash­ers di­rec­tor Bran­don Koo said his or­gan­i­sa­tion’s sup­port for the ini­tia­tive was root­ed in three prin­ci­ples that had guid­ed it from the be­gin­ning: “youth, com­mu­ni­ty, and cul­ture.”

His mes­sage to the chil­dren went be­yond re­ceiv­ing as­sis­tance. It was about recog­nis­ing the val­ue of the com­mu­ni­ties to which they be­long and un­der­stand­ing that ed­u­ca­tion­al achieve­ment can take dif­fer­ent forms.

Koo spoke open­ly about choos­ing a non-tra­di­tion­al ca­reer in events man­age­ment and the im­por­tance of hav­ing par­ents who sup­port­ed that de­ci­sion while in­sist­ing that he pur­sue it pro­fes­sion­al­ly and re­spon­si­bly.

He urged par­ents to sup­port their chil­dren’s am­bi­tions, what­ev­er they might be.

He al­so of­fered Is­land Crash­ers’ plat­forms as a pos­si­ble re­source for young peo­ple in­ter­est­ed in en­tre­pre­neur­ship, promis­ing as­sis­tance with mar­ket­ing and ac­cess to a wider au­di­ence.

MP­PA ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber Wen­dell Perez brought the dis­cus­sion clos­er to the re­al­i­ties con­fronting fam­i­lies in the com­mu­ni­ty.

Hav­ing grown up close to the area, Perez spoke of the im­por­tance of giv­ing back and en­sur­ing that the knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence of old­er gen­er­a­tions are passed on to younger peo­ple.

Re­cip­i­ents of MP­PA schol­ar­ships were Zyan Chee Awai of Rio Claro West Sec­ondary, Priya Ram­lal of Rio Claro East Sec­ondary, Kaylee Tay­lor of Cowen Hamil­ton Sec­ondary, Kai Williams of Man­zanil­la Sec­ondary, and Jaiell Williams of North East­ern Col­lege.

Eleven-year-old Tyree Dy­er of Guayagua­yare St An­tho­ny RC Pri­ma­ry School re­ceived a ham­per to sup­port a sec­ond at­tempt at the SEA.

Alexan­der said stu­dents re­peat­ing the ex­am­i­na­tion were too of­ten un­sup­port­ed by the sys­tem and ex­pressed in­ter­est in ef­forts to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly pro­mote their in­ter­ests.

Oth­er ad­dress­es came from for­mer Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray and Nicholas Jack­man, group chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer of the ANSA McAL Group, a long­stand­ing sup­port­er of the MP­PA.

Both ex­pressed sup­port for the As­so­ci­a­tion’s work. Jack­man urged par­ents to par­tic­i­pate more ac­tive­ly in schools and to dis­cov­er the par­tic­u­lar tal­ents and in­ter­ests of their chil­dren rather than forc­ing them in­to pre­de­ter­mined paths.

“Lis­ten to your chil­dren. Work with them. Work with what they’re like,” he said.

Paray de­liv­ered a sim­i­lar mes­sage, urg­ing greater com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween par­ents and their chil­dren.

“Where does a great na­tion start?” he asked. “Build­ing a great na­tion starts at the din­ner ta­ble. It starts with par­ents sit­ting with their chil­dren and hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions.”

The event was at­tend­ed by stu­dents, par­ents, cur­rent and re­tired teach­ers, and a num­ber of com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivists.