FELICIA Blake runs a modelling agency, has a clothing line, and manages an entertainment centre. It’s little wonder she was one of the 2007 recipients of the Prime Minister’s Youth Award for Entrepreneurship.

Still, the 23-year-old graduate of Excelsior Community College and a semi-finalist in the 2007 Saint International Model Icon competition is not satisfied.

It’s not that she’s ungrateful for the talents with which she’s been blessed and it’s not that she does not appreciate her remarkable success to date. It’s just that her desire to give back to society and her passion for the young people of her inner-city community in Mountain View, east Kingston, runs deeper than all her other interests.

“You have a lot of persons out there who are really dedicated, who really want to reach somewhere, but when they try to go up, they have this thing pulling them down. You have a lot of persons within the inner-city community who want – who need – the help, but they don’t have the persons to motivate them [and] when they even try on the outside they get negative responses. So at the end of the day they give up and most of them end up going the next way,” she tells Career & Education.

Blake said she realised that deficiency from an early age and it was one of the main reasons she decided to start her own business.

“I said I want to have my own business [because] I want to employ somebody. I want to give back to society. That’s why I really decided to have a business. I really want to give back to society,” she repeated. “There are a lot of unemployed persons out there. I wouldn’t mind if a couple years from now I can employ even 150 more. If I can help one person and that one helps another, it might not be 100 per cent, but it would be moving from a stage one to a stage two at least.”

And so it was that Felicia began her clothing line, Felicittyy, at age 15. Two years later, she hired models – the agency is now called Felician – from within her community to wear her pieces, and today she has about 13 of them on her payroll.

“My grandmother was a dressmaker, and the first outfit I made was at the age of eight. It was a skirt for my mommy. I cut it out and used my hands to put it together,” she recalls, describing the knee-length blue floral print cotton skirt made with an elastic waist.

The centre which she manages along with owner Michael Murray and ground manager Peter Elliott is the Eastern Peace Centre located at 121 Windward Road. It is home to her two businesses, as well as a host of other projects, including VIP bars, an Internet café, a literacy programme for children, a music studio, a skating area, a pre-school, a mini-store and the head office for the Eastern and Central Taxi Route Association. The centre hosts parties, dances, stage shows, barbecues, church events, dinners and other events.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re a Labourite or a PNP or whatever, you can come through these gates. We don’t promote violence. We don’t promote politics. We don’t promote war. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you’re from. We’ve not had a fight here in the past six or seven years,” she said, noting the centre’s role in the peace process in east Kingston.

“We are trying to see how much we can give back to the community in a positive way to see how much we can reduce crime and violence,” added Blake, who is also a former student of Garmex Heart Academy, where she did the level II Essential Fashion designing.

But this is not the end of the road for Felicia. She has very big dreams. She wants to start a counselling group comprised of her fellow Prime Minister’s Youth awardees.

“This is definitely not it. I’m trying to see how much I can get the centre promoted and then from there I want to be a midwife. And I love dancing so I might get into the whole dancing/acting thing later on. As for modelling? Definitely before the midwifery! I want to be a producer too, because I really love music,” she said enthusiastically.