George ‘Antuan’ Young has devoted his life to helping youth regarded as outcasts in inner-city communities in and around Kingston.

To many who do not know him, his efforts to reach out to these at-risk youth could be described as a part of his employment obligation, but for Young, who was shot and left paralysed, this is not the case.

Young, now 36, was 13 when a bullet fired from the gun of a drug addict family friend left him paralysed — shattering his hopes of enjoying a normal adolescence — and taking from him his ability to ever live a normal life.

“I was 13 when a family friend, who happened to be a drug addict shot me while I was on my way to the shop; — a shot that saw me lying helpless in a hospital bed for one year replaying the incidents of the day, while I pondered on how I could move on,” Young told the

Jamaica Observer.

But while the urge to give up lingered at the door of a teenaged Young several times, this was not enough to dissuade him. Propelled to achieve almost immediately after being discharged from hospital, Young returned to school at St George’s College. But his reintroduction to the classroom setting was ended prematurely two years later when he fell ill.

“I was not able to finish high school after just two years of attending following my release from the hospital, and as you can imagine, I was broken. I was no longer well enough, but that did not stop me from getting access to education. I knew what I wanted and that is when I made the decision to teach myself,” Young said

“From there I did City and Guilds examinations and my GED [Graduate Education Development] tests which I was able to do on the UWI [University of the West Indies, Mona] campus,” he continued.

Young was determined after obtaining this qualifying certificate to continue studying. But this demanded an environment that required very little travelling; — this led him to applying to an online programme at the University of Lester in the United Kingdom.

“I did my bachelor’s degree in human resource management at the University of Lester in the UK. It’s the same institution that I am currently pursuing my masters and in the same discipline,” Young said

It was in his early twenties just about the time he had completed his first degree, that Young explained that his journey to assist groups of people started when he became a justice of the peace with responsibility to monitor and safeguard the interest of detainees in the Central and Western Kingston police divisions.

Young, who assisted with the transformation process of remandees and at-risk youth, especially through the Stand Up Jamaica Initiative, was admired because of the way in which he carried out his job. In fact, it was the efficiency and the passion with which Young executed his mandate that earned him a nomination for the Governor General’s Award for Excellence for the county of Surrey, and most recently the ‘I Believe’ Initiative (IBI) Ambassadorial Award.

Young was among over 80 Governor General ‘I Believe’ Initiative 2015 Ambassador recipients who were pinned during the annual IBI Ambassadors’ Reception held at King’s House in St Andrew recently.

The I Believe Initiative is an arm of the governor-general’s programme for excellence formed on the pillars of the statement: — There’s nothing wrong with Jamaica that cannot be fixed by what is right with Jamaica. Governor General Sir Patrick Allen established the values-based programme in May 2011 to focus on youth development — with a particular emphasis on youth, education and family — to effect change across Jamaica by introducing counter-destructive attitudes in an effort to sustain values.

Young said that he was humbled to be chosen among, other distinguished awardees but even more importantly to have been asked to fill a very important capacity — that encapsulated one of his life’s passions — serving the youth of Jamaica.

“I am grateful to have been chosen to receive this award among so many other distinguished servants to our country. But, for me, this award will allow me to pursue a passion that I always wanted to, now, with the required support.

“As an IBI ambassador, I will be able to go into an inner-city community and hopefully round up a cohort of 20 persons, between the ages of 15 and 35, whom I will help with behaviour change modification.

Young said that this would put him in a position to impact the lives of the hundreds of at-risk youth whose life could take a positive turn.

“Oftentimes they have the knowledge, and the skills, but they lack the right attitude [and] that hinders them from having healthy social relationships and also makes them unemployable,” Young stated.

He told the

Sunday Observer that the six-month-long programme that he will implement would help the young men to become better at understanding and dealing with matters such as conflict resolution, leadership and respect, and learning how to enjoy healthy relationships with others.

“There are many communities across Jamaica which need this type of intervention. So, at the end of this six-month programme, I will be moving from this community to another, and then another and it will continue like this until I die,” Young said.