Fo­cus on your pas­sion, do not fear fail­ure and em­pow­er your­self. This was the ad­vice of US pros­e­cu­tor and keynote speak­er Rod­ney Bullard, yes­ter­day, at the Ju­nior Achieve­ment Youth Out­reach pro­gramme at Queen's Hall, St Ann's. Bullard was in­vit­ed by the Em­bassy of the Unit­ed States in T&T to host a se­ries of mo­ti­va­tion­al ses­sions with youth in T&T as part of the em­bassy's recog­ni­tion of Black His­to­ry Month. Ad­dress­ing stu­dents, Bullard said the three most im­por­tant lessons that could be learnt by all stu­dents were to fo­cus on pas­sions, not to fear fail­ure and to em­pow­er one­self.

He told stu­dents to fo­cus on what moved them, work con­tin­u­ous­ly on what they love and per­fect their pas­sion. Bullard cit­ed the ex­am­ple of fa­mous Amer­i­can bas­ket­ball play­er, Michael Jor­dan, who used his pas­sion for bas­ket­ball to dom­i­nate the sport, through em­brac­ing what he loved and work­ing end­less­ly to per­fect his skills. Bullard is ex­pect­ed to vis­it­ed sev­er­al schools around the coun­try, in­clud­ing the Youth Train­ing Cen­tre and Suc­cess Laven­tille Com­pos­ite. He told stu­dents they should not be­come vic­tims to so­ci­ety's low ex­pec­ta­tions of youth. Bullard said "Do not let any­one, un­der no cir­cum­stance, tell you you can't." The aim of Bullard's mis­sion was to pro­mote a pos­i­tive and em­pow­er­ing at­ti­tude among youth in T&T.