Never too late

Kiesha Clarke and Anette Morgan are relishing the opportunity to gain a certified skill in their 40s after dropping out of high school because of teenage pregnancy.

They are both pursuing housekeeping operations at the Manchester Craft Institute (MCI).

Clarke, a shopkeeper from Nine Miles in Spaldings, Clarendon, told The Gleaner that she got pregnant at age 15 while she was a student at the Dunoon Park Technical High School.

Now, at 45 years old with six children, including two sets of twins, the single mother wants to enhance her earning potential.

“Whatever I am doing at home cannot [comfortably cover our expenses] between mi and dem, so I come to school to see if I can get certified to see if I can get out in the world,” she said.

“Sitting at my home every day from shop to house, it was getting to my nerves. So I said I wanted to try something different,” she added.

Morgan, a 49 year-old farmer in southern Manchester, said she felt listless in the daytime whenever her seven-year-old, the last of her four children, was at school. So she wanted to do something different to occupy her time.

Although she had not attended school since she dropped out of the Winston Jones Comprehensive High – now Winston Jones High – when she got pregnant, she was excited when her sister-in-law suggested she enrolled at the MCI.

“I just make up my mind to try something. From you make up your mind, you know that you’re best fit with how to cope,” she said.

Both women extolled the experience at the more than three-decades-old school, stating that the recent removal of fees for HEART/NSTA Trust courses up to the associate degree level made enrolment and continuation in the programme easier for them.

“I am so excited in the morning to get up to come to school, to get my work done and all a dat!” Clarke said.

Improve employability

Morgan, who previously worked as a domestic worker, is constantly amazed at how much she did not know prior to starting the course.

“It’s been a great benefit to me because I get to know certain things that I never know before,” she said.

She is hoping that the skills she acquires will improve her employability.

“I have [received the knowledge] to go into the wider world in – the hotel or on a cruise ship or travel. I am able now to do things much better than the first time,” she said.

Morgan said she is now an advocate for other older women, especially those in rural Jamaica, to obtain a skill, as it is never too late to “uplift yourself”.

Programme coordinator at the MCI, Nova Francis, told The Gleaner that the school is still very much sought after for people seeking to develop a skill and earn certification in Manchester and surrounding areas.

The institution caters to persons ages 17 to 35, and offers skills training in the vocational areas of commercial food preparation, housekeeping, and food and beverage service, which are augmented by courses in remedial English language, conversational Spanish, remedial mathematics, computer literacy, and entrepreneurship.

Francis noted that the MCI was established by the Rotary Club of Mandeville and the Social Development Commission in Mandeville. But, in 1995, the HEART/NSTA Trust was requested by the then board of management to intervene and provide oversight after the then major provider of funding – Alcan Jamaica Company – could no longer maintain its level of funding.

She said, while there is still a $15,000 fee charged to assist with some administrative costs, this does not affect enrolment, as the institution constantly meets its quota of students. The current 79 trainees are realising the benefits, Francis added.

On Wednesday, they were engaged in a one-week Team Jamaica Training and Certificate Programme presented by the Tourism Product Development Company. Programme Director Yaneke Sailsman said a key part of the initiative is self-development.

“For the entire course, we work on self-development sublimely, by giving them assignments which require them to practise presenting, ‘cause that is what they’re going to be assessed on,” she said.

sashana.small@gleanerjm.com