Jacqueline Cummings

“WHATEVER you face in life- whether good or bad- use it as a learning experience to help yourself and other peers.” This is one of the mantras that guide the profession and daily life of Youth Life Coach, Jacqueline Cummings.

As the second of 11 siblings (two boys and nine girls) growing up in the ancient county- Berbice, Cummings always held a vested interest in youth development and tackling social issues.

“At the age of 17, I started mixing with youths in the community,” she said and explained that because of this, she realised that there were many social issues within the Black Bush Polder/ Mibicuri community.

Moreover, her involvement in church while growing up helped to shape her into an outgoing young woman. “I just liked working with young people,” she said, and nearly two decades later, she continues this work and has jumped on board every single youth-focused project in her community.

The ancient county has seen many cases of suicide over the years, and Jacqueline had always felt a strong connection to mental health and suicide issues. “I’m passionate about many social issues, but suicide and mental health per se are the main focuses,” Cummings noted.

In fact, she related that she lost a friend early on in her career. Since then, she has strived to raise awareness in these areas and align herself with work in the area. Understandably, she became a general counsellor (among other social work jobs and a subsistence farmer).

Recently though, she has added the title “Youth Life Coach” to her portfolio. Being a coach attached to the local not-for-profit `Specialists in Sustained Youth Development and Research’ (SSYDR), Jacqueline has managed to find the nexus between youth and family development.

In this capacity, she works with an individual who would have received an alternative sentence to juvenile detention. The idea is to guide the young person toward achieving socially acceptable goals through acceptable means, as against resorting to criminal or deviant behaviour. Jacqueline also focuses on family development as part of her work.

She uses another mantra to guide her work with these youths. “No matter how bad the circumstances, there’s always tomorrow- learn from the experience and use it,” Jacqueline related and noted that she would also encourage the young people to, in turn be coaches or mentors in society.

But social work in her community, she said, is not without its challenges. One major hindrance is the lack of support for youths in the area from the government and other stakeholders. She stressed that without the support (in cash or kind), engaging in this work becomes challenging.

Nevertheless, she was selected as the adult mentor to accompany six Guyanese teenagers during a cross-cultural and leadership exchange in the United States in August 2017. Since returning in that same month, she has been working alongside the group on their follow-on project.

For Jacqueline, youth are the future and she knows that she has a role to play in preparing them for it.