OCCERO Fuller is one determined man. Sent by his mother to live in the country with his great-grandmother as a child, he did not attend school, though the move was made to improve his chances of a better life. But illiteracy didn’t stop the young man, who was recently awarded a European Union scholarship to pursue his master’s degree in Samoa.

“I wasn’t sent to school. Education was not a priority where I was sent. I woke up in the mornings, got water, tied goats, attended to household chores, went to the farm, reaped produce, went to the market to sell and returned home with the profits,” Fuller explained.

As such, at age 12 when he returned to Kingston to live with his mother, he could neither read nor write. But his mother’s resilience was not daunted, and she did what she had to do to get him placed in a school.

“I went to Norman Gardens Primary and Junior High School and did an aptitude test, which revealed I wasn’t doing well. My mother was told to buy a desk and chair and they would see what they could do. At the end of the year in grade seven, out of 42 students I placed 42nd, and the teacher came to me and said, ‘I don’t know what can happen, your life does not look promising at all’. The fact that I wasn’t doing well motivated me. In grade eight I came 27th and I felt great. From then on I just worked harder and my ranking improved as I went along. I never gave trouble, I just wanted that when my mother came to the school she’d see a good academic report and not just a good character report,” he said.

From Norman Gardens, Fuller, now 28, went to Holy Trinity High and later Camperdown, where he rose above his challenges.

“Indirectly and directly people have said I couldn’t do it, so I decided to increase my skills. I was part of the debating team, quiz club, science, interact… anything I could be a part of I became a part of. While at Camperdown I was always told that to do better, you have to have the capabilities to do better. My experience there really moulded me. We had A badges, which would determine who was doing well. I never got one, but the then principal always encouraged me and one year I won the Michael Manley essay competition,” he explained.

This determination Fuller exerted would chart his course through the rest of his life. He said because of financial constraints he worked before applying to the University of the West Indies, where he pursued an undergraduate degree in gender and development studies. But in order to pursue his degree he had to decide between his education and keeping his job.

“My boss wouldn’t give me the time to go to school and kept saying it’s either school or work. But while registering for a few courses I saw her also registering and I thought to myself, ‘If she wanted to go further in life, why shouldn’t I? What did I have to lose?’ I decided to make a leap of faith. I resigned, sold a gold chain I had, paid my miscellaneous fees and obtained a student loan,” he said.

Acknowledging that he’s not the best writer and explaining that because of this setback he still has problems with the language, Fuller was still not satisfied and applied for the European Union Caribbean-Pacific Island Mobility Scheme Scholarship (CARPIMS), which is funded by the European Commission. He was successful.

The scholarship will allow him to pursue a master of arts degree in development studies at the National University of Samoa.

Fuller is one of two persons from the Caribbean who received the scholarship out of a total of four awardees. The scholarship has two target groups — target one is for the Caribbean and Pacific regions and target two provides scholarships to study in Europe. Each target provides 19 and 26 scholarships respectively to pursue a master’s in any development studies area for 22 months at universities which are part of the CARPIMS arrangement.

“I am running my own race,” Fuller said. “I’m not competing with anyone. The scholarship is designed to give students from developing countries an opportunity to be skilled in an area and contribute to their country.”

He added: “I always wanted an international scholarship, to be able to live within any environment, to think more outside the box, understand people and realise that the world is not where you are — there are other areas. The courses in gender really moulded me. Now when I travel I see things differently. Gender is more than issues that affect men and women; it can be placed in almost every aspect of life.”

Fuller intends to use the scholarship to focus on social development, with hopes of helping Jamaica achieve notable social mobility.

“More needs to be done with how we execute our projects. We implement things, leave them and expect them to just work. No! Projects are like newborns, you have to nurture them until they can survive alone,” he said.

His aim is to inspire people like himself, who may not have received a great start educationally in life.

“I don’t want a young person who can’t read at 12 or 14 to feel like their life has ended forever. You can take basic steps to get to where you want. When you’re within a relationship you find a common ground. Regardless of what you want, what matters most is how you get it. Whatever your goals are, be steadfast, know you have to get there and go for it. Know what you’re about, know where you’re coming from and use that as your driving force. Don’t beat up on yourself, see where you went wrong, try to correct it and reach for your goals, which are limitless.”