Campbell: Education a vaccine against poverty
PNP gen sec, president urge scholarship awardees to help build nation
Published:Tuesday | February 1, 2022 | 12:09 AMChristopher Serju/Senior Gleaner Writer
People’s National Party (PNP) General Secretary Dr Dayton Campbell impressed upon scholarship awardees the value of a solid education as a lifesaver during Saturday’s O.T. Fairclough Trust Fund Educational Grants award ceremony.
The 11 recipients – a mix of high-school and tertiary-level students – were presented with bursaries valued at $25,000 for those in secondary schools and the others getting $50,000 each at the ceremony at the party’s St Andrew-based headquarters.
The funds, which will be directly transferred to the institutions of study, will go towards covering tuition, boarding, and book supplies.
“Education is a vaccine against poverty,” Campbell said in his welcoming remarks. “It is what will cause you to live a better life than your parents did. It is what causes progress to take place in the family, and so I want for you to embrace, wholeheartedly, the opportunity that has been given to you and to make the most of it.”
He implored them to understand that “success is not only about you achieving something and going off by yourself to live on a hill top, but for you to turn back and to bring somebody else along”.
PNP President Mark Golding, who instituted the scholarship programme to honour the legacy of one of the founding members of the PNP, Osmond Theodore Fairclough, reminded his audience that Fairclough was the man who drafted Norman Manley, the party’s first president, into politics.
Manley, who would later become one of Jamaica’s national heroes, was touted as the country’s top lawyer at the time and was deeply involved in public service but not politics.
It was the Manley-led Government, which, in 1957, imposed a trade embargo against apartheid South Africa, only the second country to do so, after India.
“That was a very bold move. We weren’t even independent then, but we did it, nonetheless. So we are a party that understands the arc of history that Jamaica is pursuing, which must be one of upliftment for the mass of our people and building a much more just society, where everyone has the same level of access to the opportunities to make themselves the best that they can be,” said Golding, who is also the leader of the Opposition.
He urged the recipients to emulate the selflessness that characterised the life and thinking of those party stalwarts.
“Always include in your consciousness and your philosophy on life the importance not only of pursuing personal development, but as you get ahead, seeing your role in society as not just somebody who is there to lead a selfish life – a life which only focusses on your immediate needs and ambitions – but somebody who is here to make a difference to mankind,” said the PNP president.
Golding challenged the awardees to start by helping in their own communities and then going on to impact the wider Jamaica, and, in the process, help Jamaica to become the nation it is destined to be.
“We are a great nation. We are a nation that has shown the world how to be tolerant and live together as persons form different backgrounds,” he said.