I am pleased that I have been asked to address you at this installation banquet.  Tonight brings back memories of my own changing of the guard in 1992 when I received the baton of leadership.

I can clearly remember the sense of personal responsibility I felt at being entrusted with the great task of leading this club, and at the same time, confidence, knowing that I had like-minded individuals with me to take on and accomplish the goals we had set out for the club.

Even as I heard the report of the last year’s activities and the year before that, the fact that the Club has stayed together – and the fact that it has embraced change, by embracing women in Rotary. I must tell you, when we started, it would not have been conceivable. It would not have been even uttered in idle conversation. And tonight I see an Assistant District Governor who herself is a lady and two ladies in the Rotary Club of New Kingston - it speaks to the fact that you have embraced change and that you have moved the cheese.

And so, it is with this sense of nostalgia and pride that I join in congratulating Rotarian Godfrey on his election as president of this noble group. It is refreshing that our organization continues to attract and challenge persons to be of service to their nation, and to be the embodiment of our mantra, Service above Self.

Both your outgoing and newly elected presidents have pointed to the significant impact that this club has been making on the national landscape.

In building the great fellowship which is so important in Rotary and which was at the very establishment of Rotary, where members came together in a circle to greet each other at regular intervals many years ago.

I commend the Club for the various projects it has undertaken and maintained over the past years.
As I review your list of community care and involvement projects, I am forced however to question, despite the good work you are doing and all that has been done:

• Does Jamaica really care?
• Do we and our leaders – in public, private and civic organisations - really care about what is happening in our country – in mainstream Jamaica?

For many years we have been dealing with some of the same fundamental issues, with no long-term, sustainable solution in sight.

Illiteracy in our educational institutions remains a worrying issue with no impactful strategy on how to address or eradicate it. The continuous under investment in education is manifested in the high levels of illiteracy among secondary school graduates.

Each year, hundreds of our lives are lost on our roads due to improper road use resulting in crashes. Much of our country’s intellectual and economic resources are lost each day. Even recently we were faced with the loss of four young lives in Manchester in a road crash.

There is also the improper care of our nation’s unattached persons – old and young. Just last year, as a nation, we had to grapple with the loss of young lives at the Armadale Juvenile Centre under horrific circumstances, which brought back memories of a similar tragedy at the Eventide Golden Age Home many years ago. There is also the abuse, neglect and maltreatment of children in State care – the case at Reddie’s Home of Safety and their efforts to remove an abused young child from the system comes readily to mind.

The perennial issue of squatting remains a sore point throughout the island. It is estimated that approximately 20 per cent of our Jamaican population resides in squatter settlements.

There are also the attendant environmental issues - the squalid conditions in which some persons live – even in some of our urban centres.

The question must therefore be asked – who is to be held accountable, and who is responsible to ensure that solutions are found to these and other issues that we face, almost daily?

Mr President and my fellow Rotarians … I believe we have to be the agents of change - by positioning ourselves to respond to the needs of our communities and the society at large. To accomplish this, it is necessary to have a clear strategic plan that will translate into change that will impact our future.

Peter Schwartz in his book Inevitable Surprises states that the future can be predicted; and, therefore we should not be surprised by what is happening today, because many of these occurrences have their roots from many years ago.

The Report on Political Tribalism in 1997 indicated that the practice of political parties allocating housing and scarce benefits to supporters in order to establish homogeneous voting communities resulted in proliferation of garrison communities. Therefore, we are not to be surprised at what we have been witnessing in the past couple of weeks.

However, we cannot blame the present situation on current developments; but instead we should look at our previous actions which are now being manifested in all spheres of our public, private and civic lives.

By using the Peter Schwartz model to predict the future, we can change the future today by simply implementing programmes now that will have a lasting impact for years to come.

Kofi Anan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations in his acceptance speech for the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize said that:

“Scientists tell us that the world of nature is so small and interdependent that a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon rainforest can generate a violent storm on the other side of the earth. This principle is known as the ‘Butterfly Effect’.  Today, we realize, perhaps more than ever, that the world of human activity also has its own ‘Butterfly Effect’."

That statement gives clarity to the fact that: small actions, such as the ones we make here, can have a significant far-reaching ‘butterfly effect’.

One such effect is the success story of the Mutual Building Societies Foundation (MSBF) – established through the partnership of two competing organisations – Jamaica National Building Society and The Victoria Mutual Building Society, which came together to make a difference in the outcome of non-traditional rural high schools.

The MBSF Centres of Excellence programme is a five-year development plan to influence, guide and change the way we manage rural schools and teach children, in every aspect of the education system. The elements of the programme — to upgrade, revise, and enhance how rural high schools were being administrated; how students were being taught; how students were being assessed; and the physical spaces in which students were learning - were carefully crafted.

The Centres of Excellence programme has been introduced in six upgraded rural high schools.  Mile Gully and McGrath High Schools were the first two schools to participate in the pilot project in 2008. And, last year, they were joined by—Godfrey Stewart, Porus, Green Pond and Seaforth High Schools.

There was a time, not too long ago, when Mile Gully could have been written off as just an upgraded secondary school…with not-so-bad teachers and fair students.  And, because it was not seen as being one of the Traditional High Schools, there was no rush for GSAT students to put the name of this institution on their forms—as their first or only option.

However, since the implementation of the Centres of Excellence Programme, the output of Mile Gully is significantly different from before.  The school has achieved excellent results in Business Education and Visual Arts, at the CSEC exams; and in Business Education, the school is ranked as one of the five top schools in Jamaica. And also in 2009, Mile Gully placed in the top five among non-traditional high schools in the area of Information Technology. Now students are selecting the school as their first choice in GSAT exams. And we note that at the last examinations, we found students who were no longer in the 40’s and 50’s and 30’s, but students who were getting 70’s and 80’s who would not before apply to that school, are now applying. So we know what’s going to happen with Mile Gully - it’s going to continue to perform.

What Mile Gully and the other rural high schools in the programme have done is to challenge and change the perception of a Single Story, which previously relegated them as second best to traditional high schools.

Chimamanda Adiche, a young Nigerian writer, in her concept: The Danger of A Single Story, tells us that…if you show a people as one thing over and over, then that is what they become.

Rural high schools were made to feel that they could not measure up academically to traditional high schools.  In other words, previously the question could have been asked…can anything good come out of these schools?

Today, the achievements of these schools are indicative of a resounding yes!!

This past Wednesday, I was the guest speaker at the graduation ceremony of Mile Gully High School in Manchester, and I was impressed by the significant strides that the school has made over the past two years.

When you walk around the school campus there are Monitoring Boards to indicate the achievements being made on—a school level, grade, class, or subject area basis. The school community can also immediately recognise, from their individual scores and grades, if they are contributing negatively or positively to the overall performance of the school.

Under the Centre of Excellence programme, the school also received new computer and science labs.

The new Integrated Science Laboratory and equipment, now allows students to adequately complete the required School-Based Assessments and other tasks set in the CSEC syllabus and school curriculum. As a result, students from this school were entered in the CSEC Physics examinations for the first time, this year.

The students have also been introduced to an animated E-Learning Programme in physics, biology and mathematics, which moves away from “Chalk and Talk”, and students can actually see animations…such as how blood circulates in our body.  As a consequence, students are motivated and they have responded positively to this innovative approach, with many lining up outside of the Science Lab before class time.

This is just one example of how we can show we care, and change the future of our children by addressing issues affecting our educational institutions today.

Another way in which we can change the future today is to empower citizens to create economic pathways to success.

Ten years ago my organisation made the decision to venture into lending to the small business sector.  We acquired the micro credit loan portfolio of a commercial bank from the Financial Services Adjustment Company (FINSAC).  We saw this move into small business lending as a natural step in our bid to widen the range of services to our members.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was instrumental in providing us with the necessary technical support for the start up and assisted us to expand the business and implement relevant technologies. And the Government of Jamaica, through the Development Bank of Jamaica, also facilitated credit guarantees and financing.

The results of this experiment with JN Small Business Loans Limited have been phenomenal; and today, it is regarded as among the best microfinance entities in this hemisphere.

When the company began operations in October 2000, we acquired a loan portfolio of just over 2,000 loans valued at $37.9 million. To date, JNSBL has granted more than 187,000 loans with a value of some $7.35 billion.

More importantly, it has created or maintained some 47,000 jobs in the manufacturing, distributive, transport, agriculture, and the service and communication sectors.  And we are proud that some 74% of the loans are accessed by women – with the majority of our clients falling in the 31 to 60 age range, and 96% of the borrowers repay the loans.

A study conducted by the Tropical Medicine Research Institute of The University of the West Indies in November 2008 on the impact of our Microcredit programme on Health and Development in Jamaica. The study indicated that “microcredit appears to have the potential to enable households to invest in health. Health improvements bring with them accrual of human capital.”

The formation of JN Small Business Loans provided us at Jamaica National with the opportunity to create an enabling environment for business to thrive; provide an advocacy forum for small business persons by providing them with affordable and accessible credit, and to improve the quality of life for many Jamaicans.

Conclusion

These are two examples of how my organisation and its competing partner responded to the need to change the future, and I commend this strategy to the Rotary Club in your endeavours to adopt a similar approach to make a difference in the lives of the persons whom you serve.

We all have an opportunity to not make one story become the only story…because Jamaica is far too unique and bold a country—and no Jamaican, company, organisation or this nation, should be limited to a single story.

I challenge each Rotarian here this evening to grasp the opportunity to change Jamaica, and by extension the world, by taking on some challenging problem and finding a meaningful solution.

The task ahead is great but I am assured that with the foundation that has been laid by your predecessors, this club and administration is capable of meeting the challenge.

Thank you.

Earl Jarrett
General Manager, Jamaica National Building Society