RJRGLEANER, Ardenne High join forces to mentor students
Published:Sunday | November 17, 2019 | 12:18 AMVanessa James - Gleaner Writer
Ardenne High School, with a push from the school’s dean of discipline, The Reverend Mario Samuels, and Principal Nadine Molloy, created a summer intervention programme in 2014 to assist students who were having challenges, behavioural and otherwise.
Now in its fifth year, the school’s summer intervention programme has partnered with the RJRGLEANER Communications Group to create a more lasting effort, dubbed the RJRGLEANER/Ardenne High School Mentorship/Internship Programme, which was launched last Wednesday at RJR Broadcast House.
Samuels said that he developed the desire to impact students as a result of his own past experiences.
“Coming to Ardenne seven years ago, there was one thing on my mind, and that is to make an impact. How many lives would I be able to touch and transform? This had to be my mandate as I had an intimate understanding of my own past; a past characterised by my own failures. There was a great light on the horizon as I interacted with persons who showed me a better path. The process was long, but eventually change happened,” Samuels said.
He went on to explain that being employed at the school gave him the perfect opportunity to pass on what he learnt and, after a year, the summer intervention programme was born.
“In 2014, after observing and assessing, I brought a proposal to [the principal] about a summer intervention programme. The purpose of this programme was to effect change,” he said.
Approximately 45 students were taken on a one-week journey where different organisations and groups would go to the school and interact with the students. However, for 2019, Samuels wanted something different and proposed having the students go to the different organisations and businesses this time around.
RJR was one of the places visited by the students and, after consideration, the administration from the RJRGLEANER Communications Group decided to develop a more sustained programme, adding another arm of benefit in the form of an internship programme.
LEARNING OPPORTUNITY
Gary Allen, CEO of the RJRGLEANER Communications Group, said that, with the new mentorship/internship programme, students have the opportunity to be a part of, and learn from the more than 30 disciplines that are in operation at the RJRGLEANER Communications Group.
“I had a check this morning, we have more than 30 disciplines at work in our organisation and we are saying to you, if you are interested in understanding those areas so that you can make choices about where you want to go professionally, explore them with us and allow us to give you a sense of what could make you get your true potential out and make you as great as you can be,” Allen implored the students at the launch.
Molloy celebrated the launch, noting that it built on a programme that was started from humble desires and now has the possibility of reaching and impacting even more students on a larger scale.