Bo­bie-lee Dixon

When no one else dared to, for fear of get­ting caught in the mid­dle of gang war­fare in the Beetham Gar­dens, Wayne Patrick Jor­dan knew he had to stand firm and in his own words "res­cue the chil­dren of the com­mu­ni­ty," who are of­ten mar­gin­alised by so­ci­ety.He un­der­stands first-hand what aban­don­ment and re­jec­tion feel like, hav­ing not been raised by his own par­ents. In­stead he grew up in St Michael's Home for boys in Diego Mar­tin.Jor­dan, 55, who is a cer­ti­fied preschool teacher, told the T&T Guardian he just had to do some­thing for the chil­dren.If you pass along the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route, you might have no­ticed a build­ing la­belled All In One Child De­vel­op­ment Cen­tre. The build­ing looks pret­ty good now but in the 1980s, it was a gal­vanised shed with no toi­let fa­cil­i­ties–an aban­doned gov­ern­ment build­ing in what was called Shan­ty Town.

That's where Jor­dan be­gan to build the lives of the chil­dren in the com­mu­ni­ty and en­vi­rons, whose par­ents could not af­ford to send them to school.With the help of some good samar­i­tans and what he de­scribed as a "God-sent" win of US$10,000 in a com­pe­ti­tion host­ed by British Gas, Jor­dan ren­o­vat­ed the build­ing and up­grad­ed it to house 49 chil­dren in preschool and pri­ma­ry class­es.He boasts now of some of his stu­dents mov­ing on to them­selves be­com­ing teach­ers and high aca­d­e­m­ic achiev­ers."All they need­ed was love and a chance," he says with a smile.

Once the cen­tre be­gan to shine in the com­mu­ni­ty and was ac­com­plish­ing the job it was in­tend­ed to do, it quick­ly be­came part of the Ser­vol project of es­tab­lish­ing preschool cen­tres through­out the coun­try.At this junc­ture, more help came from the Com­mu­ni­ty Ser­vice Com­mit­tee of the Ro­tary Club of Cen­tral Port-of-Spain. Ro­tar­i­ans such as May­or of Port-of-Spain Ray­mond Tim Kee and Pe­ter Ale­ong, then chair­man of the club's Com­mu­ni­ty Ser­vice Com­mit­tee, com­mit­ted their as­sis­tance to the cen­tre and Jor­dan's vi­sion, and are to this day praised by Jor­dan who says he is eter­nal­ly grate­ful to them.

But All In One is not where Jor­dan want­ed to stop. Af­ter a few years and with new man­age­ment, he did it all over again with the Each One Teach One Child De­vel­op­ment Cen­tre. Twen­ty-three years lat­er Jor­dan was at it again, start­ing a cen­tre in an­oth­er aban­doned and van­dalised build­ing in 2007.In Au­gust of that year Jor­dan, who has lived in the Beetham Gar­dens since 1984, was ap­point­ed a Ser­vol com­mu­ni­ty out­reach of­fi­cer. Jor­dan re­ceived a na­tion­al award for his long-stand­ing ded­i­ca­tion to ed­u­ca­tion and com­mu­ni­ty ser­vices in 1999.He start­ed the first Each One Teach One va­ca­tion camp, where chil­dren in var­i­ous age groups were ex­posed to pro­grammes in sport, art, dra­ma, cook­ing, eti­quette train­ing, mu­sic, spir­it and team-build­ing ex­er­cis­es and more.On June 5, Jor­dan launched a preschool. It now has a ful­ly-tiled floor, three toi­lets, a day­care, spa­cious class­room and sta­tionery sup­plies, and is em­bell­ished with the art and craft done by the preschool­ers.He said the on­ly thing that's miss­ing now is an air-con­di­tion­ing unit, as it gets quite hot at times.

Just do­ing it from the heart

Par­ents are not charged month­ly fees be­cause Jor­dan ded­i­cates all his time and ser­vices for free. In ad­di­tion, break­fast and lunch for stu­dents are do­nat­ed to the cen­tre by Ser­vol.

The fa­ther of one, Jor­dan said the cen­tre, which al­so caters to old­er chil­dren–like 12-year-old Josi­ah Samuel, who re­ceives re­me­di­al teach­ing–has 55 reg­is­tered stu­dents, who hail from Mor­vant, Barataria, Gon­za­les and even Diego Mar­tin. Un­for­tu­nate­ly not all at­tend reg­u­lar­ly.When we vis­it­ed the cen­tre on June 12, we met tod­dlers on their snack break, sit­ting qui­et­ly eat­ing and in­ter­act­ing with each oth­er. Some greet­ed us with smiles and hugs, while a very shy Ja­cob Sama­roo, four, shed a few tears at the strangers who had en­tered the cen­tre. He lat­er calmed down and was quite the trouper.An ex­cit­ed Jor­dan al­so let us lis­ten to some of the ed­u­ca­tion­al CDs on which you can hear him lead­ing the chil­dren through phon­ics songs, nurs­ery rhymes and even count­ing in Span­ish. We wit­nessed the im­pact the CDs had on the chil­dren as they im­me­di­ate­ly be­gan singing along.

But it was lit­tle Mari­ah Roberts, five, who is about to grad­u­ate, who left a last­ing im­pres­sion when she demon­strat­ed her maths and writ­ing skills on the black­board with­out any coax­ing from Jor­dan."These chil­dren are very bright. When they come here their mo­tor skills are al­ready de­vel­oped, as they tote wa­ter and take out the garbage reg­u­lar­ly–a very nor­mal prac­tice around here," said Jor­dan.He tries his best to ex­pose the chil­dren to a bet­ter life through field trips, or en­ter­ing them in com­pe­ti­tions where they can learn to chal­lenge them­selves."As a mat­ter of fact they have an up­com­ing ac­tiv­i­ty at Queen's Hall," he says. Dra­ma, lots and lots of it, he says, is al­so one of his tools in mak­ing his teach­ing ef­fec­tive."Chil­dren are very vi­su­al, they like to see per­for­mances or im­ages that they can iden­ti­fy. That trig­gers the mem­o­ry and en­cour­ages them to think, and that is what I do," Jor­dan said. He is fi­nal­is­ing prepa­ra­tions for the grad­u­at­ing class, which he says is a spe­cial un­der­tak­ing as it will be the first class to grad­u­ate out of the new build­ing.Asked if he ever gets weary of do­ing good, Jor­dan replied: "I do what I do from the heart."