DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reee.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The step­son of Trini­bad artiste Kyle “Rebel Sixx” Roberts turned his pain in­to pur­pose and walked away with two tro­phies at the 2023 Na­tion­al Youth Awards host­ed by the Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vices at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, on Thurs­day evening.

Sev­en­teen-year-old Jah­mali Samuel re­ceived the Agri­cul­ture Award for chil­dren ages 10-17, as well as one of two Na­tion­al Youth Awards.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia in an in­ter­view fol­low­ing the cer­e­mo­ny, Samuel said his pain was root­ed in the mur­der of his step­dad. Roberts was mur­dered three years ago at their Arou­ca home. Samuel and his mom, Sade, were spared in the at­tack.

The tragedy was the cat­a­lyst that prompt­ed the then 15-year-old to cre­ate the Waller­field Youth Live­stock Project to mo­ti­vate him­self and oth­er young peo­ple to earn mon­ey legal­ly.

“It was a trau­mat­ic ex­pe­ri­ence for me, so dur­ing that time I said what can I do so a youth wouldn’t have to go down that road and have to mur­der some­one?” he said.

Now two years old, Samuel’s busi­ness has grown from one pig to scores of pigs, sheep, ducks, rab­bits and many oth­er an­i­mals. He is one of the youngest peo­ple in the coun­try to col­lab­o­rate with the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and has taught at least 100 young peo­ple his trade on­line, while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly bal­anc­ing school.

“It’s a lot. You just have to be able to bal­ance it out. So, go­ing home, hur­ry down with home­work, start to work on my project, do home­work. It have times I in class and peo­ple call­ing, big busi­ness­peo­ple call­ing meh to say ‘Al­right Jah­mali this is what we have to do, this is what we have to do’,” he said.

Now 17, Samuel grad­u­at­ed from Trin­i­ty Col­lege East with nine sub­jects and has a dream to study law at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don. How­ev­er, he al­so in­tends to ap­ply to Cam­bridge and Ox­ford uni­ver­si­ties.

Re­call­ing how the dev­as­tat­ing loss of his loved one changed his life, he said he was hap­py to use his sto­ry as an ex­am­ple to in­spire oth­ers.

“Go­ing through trau­mat­ic ex­pe­ri­ences, I be­lieve that you gain knowl­edge. It’s not just about age but ex­pe­ri­ence. And I was able to in­flu­ence a lot of peo­ple by shar­ing my ex­pe­ri­ences with them and show­ing how I could bet­ter help the youth and to me, I would like to say thank you to them be­cause they have in­spired me as well,” he said.

Speak­ing dur­ing the cer­e­mo­ny, Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo said her heart was filled up when she was in­vit­ed to an event to cel­e­brate the na­tion’s youth.

Ex­press­ing pride in the nom­i­nees and win­ners, the Pres­i­dent said adults should mo­ti­vate young peo­ple to pur­sue ex­cel­lence rather than scold them to be seen and not heard. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, she said it is im­por­tant to re­frame the nar­ra­tive of the na­tion’s youth, urg­ing awardees to con­tin­ue to lead by ex­am­ple.

“I be­lieve that a knock-on ef­fect of cel­e­brat­ing the ex­cel­lence of young peo­ple we gath­ered here to ho­n­our this evening, is that in cel­e­brat­ing them we will in­spire oth­er young per­sons to fol­low in their foot­steps. I am con­fi­dent that your ac­com­plish­ments will en­cour­age oth­ers of your age group, some of whom have sad­ly found them­selves in­volved in all forms of an­ti­so­cial be­hav­iour, to re­assess their life’s di­rec­tion, aban­don their present course, and thanks to the ex­am­ple you have pro­vid­ed, to start their lives over,” she said.

The Pres­i­dent added that the 2023 na­tion­al youth awardees should build on this new­found ac­com­plish­ment and con­tribute pos­i­tive­ly to their re­spec­tive com­mu­ni­ties as role mod­els.