Fay­ola K J Fras­er

Har­ness­ing the pow­er of com­mu­ni­ties as ve­hi­cles for change has long been pos­tu­lat­ed as a vi­able means of hu­man, eco­nom­ic and so­cial de­vel­op­ment. Nek­isha So­rias, an ath­lete, ed­u­ca­tor and ad­vo­cate for change, as well as an alum­nus of the US-fund­ed Com­mu­ni­ty En­gage­ment Ex­change (CEE), has long been work­ing in her com­mu­ni­ty to bring about change.

CEE is a year-long pro­gramme that equips civ­il so­ci­ety lead­ers, aged 21-27, with skills and re­sources to ad­dress 21st-cen­tu­ry is­sues in over 100 coun­tries. For 12 weeks, the in­ter­na­tion­al fel­lows have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to gain first-hand knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence as part of their as­sign­ment to col­lab­o­rate with a Youth Ad­vo­cate Pro­gramme on civ­il so­ci­ety ini­tia­tives and pre­pare to re­turn to their home coun­tries and un­der­take com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment projects. Se­lect­ed in the top 140 out of 6,000 ap­pli­cants from around the world, So­rias has long un­der­stood the cir­cu­lar im­pact of par­tic­i­pat­ing in her com­mu­ni­ty. Hail­ing from Barataria, the 25 year old is a for­mer stu­dent of Bish­op Anstey High School, and a grad­u­ate of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, with a Bach­e­lor’s in Pri­ma­ry Ed­u­ca­tion.

Dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, both of So­rias’ par­ents lost their jobs, and she be­gan to brain­storm not on­ly how to have an in­come for her house­hold, but to bring in­come to oth­er fi­nan­cial­ly strick­en peo­ple in her com­mu­ni­ty. Her brain­child, So­rias’ Mo­bile Mar­ket was born. In 2020, when el­der­ly peo­ple were ad­vised to stay at home and not in­ter­act with oth­ers, she took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to of­fer a mar­ket de­liv­ery ser­vice, bring­ing fruits and veg­eta­bles to high-risk peo­ple who could not leave their homes.

Buy­ing pro­duce from her rel­a­tives in agri­cul­ture to bol­ster their in­come, she would trek to Ma­yaro to get pro­duce and re­turn to her com­mu­ni­ty to sell. “When I got the call that I got an OJT job to teach in Oc­to­ber 2022, I was so hap­py, it was my dream and I felt like I made it,” she says. As she phased out of her mar­ket busi­ness, leav­ing the heavy lift­ing to her par­ents, So­rias be­gan work­ing in a teach­ing po­si­tion.

Af­ter on­ly three months, she got yet an­oth­er ex­cit­ing phone call. In Jan­u­ary 2023, she was of­fered a place in the CEE pro­gramme and was torn be­tween leav­ing her new job “to gal­li­vant in the US on a whim for three months,” or stick­ing with her dream job. In ret­ro­spect, So­rias has not a sin­gle re­gret. She left her job and went on the CEE pro­gramme for three months in the US. She de­scribed the way the three months of work broad­ened her mind­set, in­tro­duced her for­mal­ly to com­mu­ni­ty-based project work, and helped her bet­ter un­der­stand gen­der and youth-re­lat­ed is­sues. “Right now I’m in my sponge era,” So­rias laughs. “Dur­ing the CEE pro­gramme, I was able to soak up so much knowl­edge, have hands-on train­ing in a non-prof­it, and cre­ate such great net­works.”

She worked in a youth ad­vo­cate pro­gramme in Philadel­phia, and schools, open­ing her eyes to the US school sys­tem, which made her re­alise, “we re­al bless in ed­u­ca­tion over here. Our sys­tem is rig­or­ous, but when you put our stu­dents in­to the re­al world, they’re able to flour­ish.”

Her pas­sion has al­ways been in work­ing with chil­dren, es­pe­cial­ly those who are not raised in en­vi­ron­ments with a mul­ti­tude of op­por­tu­ni­ties. To ad­vance her work with chil­dren and com­mit­ment to spread­ing her knowl­edge of self-de­fence to the com­mu­ni­ty, So­rias is host­ing a sum­mer camp in 2024 which in­cludes self-de­fence train­ing, fit­ness, arts and crafts, hikes and even vol­un­teer op­por­tu­ni­ties for chil­dren ages ten-16. This camp will be host­ed in the St James area and of­fered to mem­bers of the pub­lic for a small fee.

So­rias re­turned home to im­ple­ment the lessons she had learned dur­ing the CEE pro­gramme. At present, she teach­es taek­won­do and self-de­fence at her al­ma mater, Bish­op Anstey High School, equip­ping young women with tech­niques that not on­ly strength­en them phys­i­cal­ly but al­so men­tal­ly. When she first start­ed teach­ing taek­won­do at Bish­op, the girls would ask her “Miss, when I’m walk­ing on my street and the fel­las telling me things, what to do?” or “Miss, I was in a taxi and a man grabbed me and I didn’t know what to do.” With these ques­tions, So­rias re­alised ear­ly on that her pur­pose for these girls was not on­ly to teach them sport, but to teach self-de­fence in re­al-life sce­nar­ios, and sup­port them in build­ing self-es­teem, “trans­form­ing the class from a sport­ing class to a re­al­i­ty check.”

When her stu­dents have ex­am­i­na­tions on the hori­zon, So­rias even gives them ex­tra time dur­ing her class to study to re­duce their load. At her very young age, So­rias has al­ready been able to im­pact scores of young women, teach­ing them valu­able life skills and of­fer­ing them an out­let for their per­son­al de­vel­op­ment.

As hum­ble as she re­mains, she has fi­nal­ly seen the im­pact that her work has on oth­ers, and “even if I have two girls in my class, it’s still a big deal and still an op­por­tu­ni­ty to help them.” She ad­vised oth­er young women to al­so be in their “sponge eras”, ab­sorb­ing every­thing life has to of­fer and im­part­ing good­ness to every­one they in­ter­act with dai­ly.

To learn more about So­rias’ sum­mer camp, feel free to con­tact her via her Face­book page (@Nek­isha So­rias).