I was raised in West Kingston. Growing up where I did, I soon realised as a child that you got more support being deviant than being good. Good people treated you badly, and friends who were doing bad things also treated you badly. For any child who’s trying to be good in the middle of all that, life is going to be lonely. Most of my… Read more →←
Author: Ross Sheil
For years, I thought I had no one, and believed that my mother abandoned me at a bus stop when I was six years old. Now, a month ago, I finally found my family. Here I am on the phone speaking to this woman 26 years later, having had all that as the truth in my mind, and after all those years alone in state care. Here we are talking on… Read more →←
Working in child protection, one of the things that concerns me most are the messages that we give our children about safety and particularly, who is safe to be around. In Jamaica we have the “stranger danger” phenomenon where young children are taught that it is strangers that you need to be wary of. Yet, we need to open up a… Read more →←
For me being involved in my daughter’s life from the start is an amazing role which all fathers should want to take part in. The early days are very critical for me because by being there she can feel a sense of security and confidence in exploring her surroundings, and as a dad I learn from these experiences. She enjoys being around… Read more →←
Girls Who Know Ja came from being in school where sexual and reproductive health was something to be tiptoed around and could not be openly discussed in class. As an adolescent, there is such a short list of people who you can go for information and an even shorter list for safe and reliable information. What is being taught in schools… Read more →←
I was robbed, right here on the corner of my school Kingston College about two years ago. There is a security camera on the same road as the school, and one time it caught two students being robbed. The video also captured cars just driving by. Nobody stopped to help. Back then, it seemed like every day a student was being robbed or… Read more →←
A year ago today I was discharged from the hospital where I had spent the past month. Yet I did not feel much better than when I entered. I did not believe in myself, my happiness, or my own self-worth. Yet somehow I found my superpower, the ability to take responsibility for my recovery – to make me work. Before, I had listened to… Read more →←
I coach at Fight for Peace teaching youths martial arts as a way to get them to exert some energy and aggression that might be pent up in them throughout the day. Taekwondo is my passion and even though at 24 I have now been a world champion four times, my real passion is for coaching. I lost my father to violence at age 5. So, for… Read more →←
Dwight Cooper, aged 13, does not say much. Instead he leads other children through his actions. Their eyes following his movements, the taekwondo class shadows him step-by-step. Whenever a student makes a mistake, it does not prompt admonishment from Dwight. Instead his style is to pause the session, walk over and demonstrate the correct… Read more →←
Smiling children are running left and right, bouncing off the walls inside a community centre in downtown Kingston, where energetic primary school students are enjoying ‘Edusport’, a games-based way of learning that is spreading across Jamaica. “This looks like it’s uncoordinated mayhem going on, but it’s not,” says their… Read more →←
