Howard Harvey, career development officer at the Leap Centre. - Ricardo Makyn/Staff Photographer
This is Part 2 of the story on Howard Harvey, career development officer at the LEAP Centre, and a one-time windscreen cleaner.
Nedburn Thaffe, Gleaner Writer
Balancing life on the streets and life as a student at Norman Manley Secondary became difficult for the teenager who was enticed by the amount of money he was pocketing.
Howard Harvey said he soon he lost sight of the motivating factor behind why he decided
to take to the street in the first place and as a result, he hardly attended school.
"I lost interest and I just didn't want to go school anymore because I was trying and it was becoming very challenging. There were other things outside of school that were pulling me; activities in the community, antisocial behaviour, so school wasn't as attractive as it was in the early part."
His wake-up call
At the end of his tenure at Norman Manley, Harvey said he had nothing to show for it and this was his wake-up call.
"When I finished school, I got a SSC (Secondary School Certificate) paper and it was so ironic that the scores that were on it were all ones. I thought it was a big achievement until I had a real look at it and realise these were all failing grades. I said to myself, 'You can't carry this go nowhere', it was all failure."
His moment of redemption came sometime later through the Young Men Christian Association (YMCA) centre which was located a just a stone's throw away from where he made his hustling cleaning cars.
He was attracted by the youth programme as that was offered there at the time and he believed this could help him turn his life around.
"The YMCA at the time was a kind of uptown, upper-class place, so it was a challenge for us to get in. At the time, it was a group of us from the inner city; we saw this place, it was so luxurious, you had all these wonderful people and we couldn't understand why they were so rich. They had swimming, badminton and all these things and the same cars we saw driving in were the ones that we were wiping outside.
"We saw this and we decide that we wanted some of this," he said
After much convincing, Harvey said he and a group of boys finally got accepted to the centre and this began his transformation.
From going through the programme, he got his first job as a swim instructor at the YMCA. This he later used as a stepping stone to enrol in the professional studies programme at the University of the West Indies (UWI) off campus site in Kingston where he did studies in early-childhood education and child psychology.
From there, he pursued a diploma in career guidance at HEART Trust/NTA and after this came his bachelor's degree in career development. He later completed his master's degree in teaching at the Mico Teachers' College (now The Mico University College). Harvey is currently pursuing his doctorate in educational leadership with Temple University located in Philadelphia, United States.
"Wherever you are now in life, if you don't want to be there, you don't have to. All of us have within us great potential to excel whether in academics or sports; whether you are on the street or not," Harvey said.
nedburn.thaffe@gleanerjm.com