In that photo, I am proud of my son Kyle and where we are. We made it to 17! That was on his birthday on March 17. I want to show off to the world that he has autism but he’s also a person – and he’s mine! Kyle was born in 2002, and four years later another autism parent and I started a support group to help other parents, which… Read more →←
What you are looking at in this photo is a model of what love can do. An appreciation for the magnitude of their progress and the determination it took to get this far. Tegan and Taigan are 13. Tegan has severe autism, and Taigan is high functioning. Tegan is non-verbal. He’ll make simple sentences but for the most part he doesn’t… Read more →←
This photo represents a significant milestone for our family: Sean who has autism recently turned 10 and just to see him smile into the camera was a big thing, because for the first five or six years he refused to make regular eye contact. So we had lots of photos of our first daughter but not many of him looking into the camera. Today… Read more →←
My son Adrian has severe autism, and on a scale of 1 to 10 I would say I love him 11. I have a very soft spot for him because he’s a very loving person. Even when autism makes him get frustrated and angry, he will just touch my face and say, ‘Did I hurt you? I am so sorry.’ Those little things just melt your heart and you just… Read more →←
Two years ago, 16-year-old Michael Bryan was caught up in a violent gang lifestyle, in the volatile community of Thompson Pen, Spanish Town where he had grown up. “As a young youth, if you did anything disrespectful to me, I was going to either hit you in your face or push my ratchet (knife) into you,” Michael admits. “That’s all… Read more →←
Eleven years of Eve for Life is a time of real reflection. When we started on this journey, my co-founder Pat Watson and I, we were giving up the comfort of our careers because we knew this work had to be done. We could never have known that we would reach this far. We are at our Mentor Mom retreat as I write this, and on our special day… Read more →←
When I volunteered for Fight for Peace, I thought I was just going to be coaching taekwondo. But now I see that with sports you can change young people, and you can change their families. You can even change a community. Our Unity and Peace programme runs in six communities in Kingston, which can sometimes be in conflict with each other… Read more →←
When I was younger, I was always on the road getting into trouble and my parents getting complaints. To be honest, when I joined Fight for Peace in 2017 it was because I wanted to fight. But boxing has allowed me to see something else: that I actually have something inside me, some potential. Being at Fight for Peace, winning fights and… Read more →←
Being kicked out of school, sitting at home with nothing to do, showed me the importance of education. I was going through a rough patch. I had issues at home, self-esteem issues, and having no one to talk to about my stress made it worse. After I was expelled I spoke with the guidance counsellor and was hopeful about showing that I… Read more →←
Sashoy Bewry placed first in the United Nations Jamaica Art for Human Rights visual arts competition open to students at Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts (EMCVPA), held to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 2018. Culture is something that sets us apart as Jamaicans, coming… Read more →←
