Pas­sion is a loaded word. In the con­text of work, oblig­a­tions and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, over 100 years gen­er­a­tions of south­ern seeds, once sown, have sprout­ed and blos­somed in­to ladies who demon­strate this pas­sion in the fab­ric of their in­di­vid­ual lives.100 years ago, a girls' sec­ondary school was found­ed in South Trinidad through the pas­sion of the Cana­di­an and Trinida­di­an Pres­by­te­ri­ans who saw the ed­u­ca­tion of girls and young ladies as es­sen­tial to the de­vel­op­ment of the hu­man cap­i­tal of this na­tion. 100 years lat­er, the pas­sion re­mains as the school cel­e­brates and com­mem­o­rates its ad­mirable achieve­ments and fur­ther pos­si­bil­i­ties.Chair­man of the Cen­te­nary Com­mit­tee of Na­pari­ma Girls' High School, Dr. Jen­nifer Yamin-Ali is a woman dri­ven by pas­sion. She says it is dif­fi­cult to as­cer­tain where this pas­sion comes from – per­haps her genes, per­haps the in­flu­ence of her en­vi­ron­ment. She sees her­self as hav­ing been mould­ed in­to a lifestyle of dis­ci­pline and or­der as a high school stu­dent, with a great ap­pre­ci­a­tion for struc­ture, good ex­am­ple, and pro­pri­ety. By no stretch of the imag­i­na­tion is she a prude, as she does en­joy a good lime, a hearty laugh (one of her sig­na­ture fea­tures) and provoca­tive sal­sa or ca­lyp­so moves on the dance floor.

Hav­ing at­tend­ed school for 7 years and taught for over 20 years at 'Naps', she even­tu­al­ly left the sanc­tu­ary of La Pique Hill to serve as Di­rec­tor of the South Cam­pus of COSTAATT for just one year, af­ter which, ac­cord­ing to her, she found her niche at the St. Au­gus­tine cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies where she serves as lec­tur­er and co­or­di­na­tor of the post­grad­u­ate Diplo­ma in Ed­u­ca­tion at School of Ed­u­ca­tion. Hav­ing ma­jored in Teacher Ed­u­ca­tion at the Mas­ters lev­el, her pas­sion for work­ing with teach­ers was re­alised when she com­plet­ed her Ph.D. in ed­u­ca­tion and was able to leave the sec­ondary class­room in or­der use her knowl­edge and skills at the ter­tiary lev­el where she has been for the last 8 years.Though pe­tite in size, this pas­sion­ate la­dy, on whose face a smile is spon­ta­neous, has a large life. Apart from her time-con­sum­ing in­volve­ment with teach­ers and teacher ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes, and the rig­or­ous de­mands or re­search in acad­e­mia, she makes the time to hold on to her orig­i­nal love, the teach­ing of Span­ish as a For­eign Lan­guage. She al­so finds joy in her adult stu­dents at the Arthur Lok Jack Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness where her Span­ish for Busi­ness class­es are fun-filled. Apart from her ex­per­tise in the field, she is con­vinced that per­son­al­i­ty has a lot to do with be­ing a suc­cess­ful teacher. She con­fess­es that one of her nick-names at the GSB is 'the en­er­gis­er bun­ny'.

She lives the mot­to of her al­ma mater 'non no­bis solum sed om­nubus' (not for our­selves on­ly but for all) as her life is al­so filled with serv­ing as Vice-Chair­man of the Board of Di­rec­tors of the St. An­drew's The­o­log­i­cal Col­lege in San Fer­nan­do. She con­fess­es that her po­si­tion there is based not so much on her affin­i­ty with the­ol­o­gy but with ed­u­ca­tion. Even in con­ver­sa­tion about this as­pect of her life, she laughs at her­self, which in her case, seems to be the an­ti­dote to stress.Dr. Yamin-Ali does not sep­a­rate pas­sion from a sense of or­gan­i­sa­tion, com­mit­ment and re­li­a­bil­i­ty. For her, they go hand in hand. Pas­sion with­out these, she says, is su­per­fi­cial. Though she is un­sure about the pow­er of des­tiny in one's life, she seems con­vinced that to a large ex­tent, her life's un­fold­ing has been serendip­i­tous. Most of the sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ments in her life, es­pe­cial­ly aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly, were not sought, but seemed to 'land in her lap', so to speak. Some of her most pro­found philoso­phies can be summed up in very sim­ple words. Her late moth­er would en­cour­age her in her school work by say­ing "Don't wor­ry, those who sow in sor­row shall reap in joy", while her work sched­ule re­flects a To­bag­on­ian quote used by a col­league not so long ago: "Drop by drop buck­et does full".

She sup­pos­es that it is be­cause of her loy­al­ty to her al­ma mater, cou­pled with her or­gan­i­sa­tion­al skills that she was asked to chair the cen­te­nary com­mit­tee of Na­pari­ma Girls' High School. It is her hope that through the ac­tiv­i­ties of the cen­te­nary com­mem­o­ra­tion, her Naps sis­ters would have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­tin­ue on their own per­son­al growth path, in­ter­act­ing with gen­uine per­sons and cher­ish­ing the sis­ter­hood while ap­pre­ci­at­ing the di­ver­si­ty in to­geth­er­ness.Whether her lead­er­ship guides the pro­mo­tion of sig­na­ture items, the or­gan­i­sa­tion of a cruise, the launch of The Tamarind Tree Blos­soms (a pub­li­ca­tion of the Alum­nae), of Youth Un­daunt­ed (a book on NGHS), of a new cook­book, or the stag­ing of a mu­si­cal in De­cem­ber, or the host­ing of a Gala Ball at the Hy­att in Ju­ly, team­work, fo­cused de­ci­sion-mak­ing, and at­ten­tion to de­tail are hall­marks of her in­volve­ment in this con­text and oth­ers.Her pas­sion will, no doubt, have a rip­ple ef­fect in many places.

First ar­ti­cles in the Se­ries –Fea­tur­ing Na­pari­ma Girls High School Past Stu­dent Dr. Jen­nifer Yamin Ali