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Doctor hopeful deserves shot in the arm

Published:Thursday | April 19, 2018 | 12:00 AMPaul Jennings

THE EDITOR, Sir:

I shared with the members of my Facebook discussion group, 'FIWI FORUM', your human interest story of Jahnoy St Jacques, an undoubtedly brilliant student clearly lacking the means to realise his undoubted potential.

Jahnoy has 10 grade ones at CSEC and five ones at CAPE, but may miss out on studying medicine, though provisionally accepted by the university, because he and his family can't afford the US$28,000 tuition fee.

We collectively congratulate him on his exemplary achievement, a much-needed fillip at a time when the worth of whole communities has again come up for question in a harshly class-divided country in which considerations of material wealth of the individual are increasingly and short-sightedly given far greater value than their intrinsic intellectual gifts.

In a country in which close to 30 percent of our grade 11 cohort graduate annually without a single subject pass at CSEC, Jahnoy's is truly an inspiring story. More particularly, when we recognise that nearly two-thirds of this sub-cohort are males - effectively the nursery from which the perpetrators of violent crime is recruited - the exemplary value of academic performers such as Jahnoy is indeed inestimable.

The Gleaner is therefore deserving of the highest accolades for publishing his plight.

Your story has elicited  pledges among members of FIWI FORUM towards making 'FIWI LIKKLE MIKKLE' count toward assisting Jahnoy in achieving his life ambitions.

I congratulate your reporter Jodi-Ann Gilpin on bringing Jahnoy's plight to light and am suggesting that you consider assisting him further through establishing and publicising an account to which deposits to a Jahnoy St Jacques Scholarship Fund might be deposited.

PAUL JENNINGS (PhD)
Administrator