For­mer West In­dies leg-spin­ner Samuel Badree says the em­bar­rass­ment of be­ing poor as a child drove him to be­come suc­cess­ful in life.

Badree made the rev­e­la­tion dur­ing an ad­dress to stu­dents at Na­pari­ma Col­lege's 2019 grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny last Sat­ur­day, as he took them through his life strug­gles — the road map to his suc­cess.

“Keep away from peo­ple who try to be­lit­tle your am­bi­tions. Small peo­ple al­ways do that but the great ones make you feel that you too can be­come great,” Badree, a past stu­dent of the Col­lege, told the gath­er­ing as he de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress.

"Who I am to­day is as a di­rect re­sult of the im­pact that this no­ble in­sti­tu­tion has had on my life. Mr Carl Sam­my, who was my first form teacher here, has had a tremen­dous im­pact on my life. Dur­ing my first term in Form one, he iden­ti­fied that I came from a very hum­ble back­ground and that is just a eu­phemism be­cause, in truth and fact, I came from ab­ject pover­ty."

He said af­ter teach­ers re­alised he was poor they would or­gan­ise food ham­pers for his fam­i­ly.

"As a lit­tle boy I was very ashamed to re­ceive that ham­per and for my teacher to see where I lived, in a wood­en, di­lap­i­dat­ed house. I some­times hid when they vis­it out of em­bar­rass­ment but the mo­ment they left I was the first one to open the bags to see what was brought. As a fam­i­ly, we were grate­ful for that ham­per, as it went a long way in mak­ing Christ­mas a lit­tle bit hap­pi­er, a lit­tle bit mer­ri­er.

"Those ac­tions of Mr Sam­my so many years ago left an in­deli­ble mark in my mind and sparked not on­ly the de­ter­mi­na­tion to be suc­cess­ful at what­ev­er I did but al­so a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to those like my­self who need acts of kind­ness and gen­eros­i­ty to achieve their full po­ten­tial."

"All of my text­books had the NCOB writ­ten in the in­side cov­er be­cause they were giv­en to me by the Na­pari­ma Col­lege Old Boys' As­so­ci­a­tion."

He thanked a group of his for­mer teach­ers for their "im­mense kind­ness and com­pas­sion to a poor coun­try kid," say­ing they were an in­spi­ra­tion to him to suc­ceed.

"I was faced with many ob­sta­cles but we must all find a way to over­come these," he said.

He said he grew up in a sin­gle-par­ent fam­i­ly of eight sib­lings af­ter his fa­ther died when he was very young.

"My moth­er was a school ven­dor and the lit­tle mon­ey she made af­ter buy­ing things to sell the next day was used for me to com­mute to school. I was the last child and my moth­er in­sist­ed that I had a good ed­u­ca­tion. She tried her best with all of her chil­dren. She in­cul­cat­ed in us the val­ue of hav­ing a good ed­u­ca­tion and of course good morals and val­ues as she en­sured we went to church as well."

Badree brought many to near tears when he said: "When my friends went to the cafe­te­ria dur­ing re­cess to buy snacks, I stayed in class and pre­tend­ed I was fin­ish­ing my home­work. I knew then that the av­enue to chang­ing my eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion, and in­deed that of my fam­i­ly, was by get­ting a good ed­u­ca­tion.

"So I made the most of my op­por­tu­ni­ty in sec­ondary school and en­sured that at the end of my time there I had some­thing to show for it. I al­so fol­lowed my pas­sion, crick­et, with great com­mit­ment and tenac­i­ty with the hope of one day mak­ing it to the na­tion­al team.

"Time man­age­ment was the great­est chal­lenge for me be­cause I missed school reg­u­lar­ly be­cause of prac­tice and games but I en­sured that dur­ing my free time I made up for the lost time. When my friends were hang­ing out, I kept abreast of my work and even dur­ing match­es I car­ried my books with me. I be­lieved that any­thing was pos­si­ble."

He told grad­u­ates that there were no bound­aries to what they can achieve and no lim­its to their po­ten­tial.

"It does not mat­ter how rich or poor you are, it does not mat­ter where you are from, what school you go to, it does not mat­ter what type of car your par­ents dri­ve, what cell phone you have, it does not mat­ter if you have the lat­est iPad or iPod or lap­top. What mat­ters grad­u­ates, is your will­ing­ness to work hard, your dis­ci­pline, your re­spect, your de­ter­mi­na­tion, courage, per­sis­tence and hon­esty. These are the val­ues that would lead you to be suc­cess­ful."