Even in the most prosperous societies there are individuals who fall through the cracks because resources just aren’t there to help them achieve full potential.

In countries with struggling economies such as Jamaica, the problem becomes exponentially more extreme. And as the Government maintains its painfully skeletal approach to spending so as to meet the targets set by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), programmes in education, health and the wider social sector get far less support than would otherwise be        the case.

The great majority of Jamaicans who are old enough to be paying attention to such matters are aware of youngsters who are missing from school more days than not, come to school hungry and without lunch money, and/or are without the books required to study.

That’s the case across the length and breadth of this land because of poverty —parents often so impoverished they have to make the choice between food on the   table and providing an education for       their children.  

Many of those deprived children would be beacons of high achievement if only they had the support. Jamaica’s human resources are continually being lost — with some of our brightest turning to crime and parasitical antisocial lifestyles — precisely because of this terrible paradox.

For that reason this newspaper has consistently in this space urged that Jamaicans, as individuals and in groups, seek to make a positive difference in whatever way they can in the lives of those less fortunate.

We believe it is wrong for Jamaicans to simply throw up their hands in the belief that there is nothing to be done.

In that respect, the story ‘Passing the medical baton’ in yesterday’s Sunday Observer should be a must-read for everyone.

It tells the story of how, as a 28-year-old dentist, current Minister of Health Dr Fenton Ferguson changed the life of an impoverished teenager who was on the verge of dropping out of school.

We are told that, entirely as a result of Dr Ferguson’s intervention, the teenager is now a prominent doctor in the United States. We are told that so grateful was the beneficiary of that intervention that he has changed his name to Ferguson and proudly refers to the health minister as   his father.

More to the point, that beneficiary, Dr Lincoln Ferguson, has built on that profound example set by his adopted father to do exactly the same for other youngsters in need, who in turn are on the same path.

A culture is evolving in the Ferguson clan that is proving unstoppable. What a nation in the making if all those who are able would choose to emulate.