After 34 years of being a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Pathfinders Club, Robert Miller was eagerly awaiting the start of the 5th Inter-American Pathfinders Camporee scheduled for April 4-8, 2023 at the Trelawny Multipurpose Stadium.

It is not because Miller is new to camporees of this magnitude — having attended others, including the 2013 staging in South Africa — but because of the impact that the Pathfinders movement has had on his life.

“The Pathfinders Club, over the years, has impacted me a whole lot,” explained Miller. “It gave me skills in leadership and how to be my brother’s keeper, in terms of the social, spiritual, and mental … it is a holistic development,” Miller said.

“Pathfinders for me is life. It teaches me the life skills that I encapsulate in my everyday life. It also enabled me to interact with people at different strata/levels of life and exposed me to several cultures and countries,” he added.

Big Rob, as he is affectionately called, was baptised in the Seventh-day Adventist Church in October 1988 at the age of 11 and quickly plunged into the service of God by becoming actively involved in the work of the church. The following year he became a member of the Pathfinders Club at Spanish Town Seventh-day Adventist Church, which he described as his biggest life-changing moment.

“Since joining the Pathfinders Club, I have always been in leadership positions where I was able to coach and mentor other youth. I eventually gained a strong interest in youth development, which came from seeing youths in Jamaican society not being rounded and geared to face the challenges the society has to offer,” Miller said.

While attending Bridgeport High School, Miller was captain of the debating team and the first boys’ team to the Inter-secondary Schools Sports Association/GraceKennedy Boys’ and Girls’ Athletics Championships. He also served as a member of the school’s Drama, Speech, and Chess clubs as well as a prefect.

It was his role in the church and the Pathfinders Club that eventually led him to the Seventh-day Adventist-owned Northern Caribbean University (NCU), which gives great focus to the holistic development of young people.

While at NCU, the 6 ft, 6 inches tall Miller realised that his role as a youth leader was definitely a call from God, which propelled him into representational politics.

Miller became a first-time Member of Parliament at his first attempt at representational politics when he contested the September 3, 2020 General Election on a Jamaica Labour Party ticket for the St Catherine South Eastern seat. He also serves on the Regulations and Public Accounts committees of Parliament.

“It is the Pathfinders Club and my tenure at NCU that fine-tuned my competencies in the area of leadership, where I am today giving leadership over a constituency, implementing policies that will affect people’s lives for the future,” he said.

“The experiences with different cultures and sub-cultures that are associated with the Pathfinders Club, even at the various camporees that I have attended in other countries, have equipped me as a leader to reach out to the people in the constituency that I represent,” Miller added.

Miller has served in various leadership capacities while at NCU, most notably in the areas of sport, academia, becoming president for the United Student Movement 2003-2004, and on a national level as vice-president of the Jamaica Union of Tertiary Students. In 2009 he was appointed a justice of the peace for the parish of Kingston and St Andrew.

“My advice to young people, especially those who are unattached and those who are perpetrators of crime and violence and scamming, is to learn a skill. As a past chairman of the National Youth Service and member of the HEART/NSTA Trust board over the years, I can say that there is a skill for everyone. Everyone has a duty to develop their square in this rock that we call Jamaica. If young men can equip themselves, they would be entrepreneurs, they would be the master of their craft and they would sustain themselves and enrich their families and, at the same time, add to the GDP [gross dometic product] of this country,” he argued.

In June 2019, Miller received the Prime Minister’s Medal of Appreciation for Service to Education, an honour he accepted with pride.

Big Rob said his most memorable moment at a camporee was the 4th held in the Dominican Republic in April 2017.

“Everyone went to bed in their tents one night, and when my wife and I woke up in the morning we realised that there was a thunderstorm and everyone else was flooded out and we were spared. To this day it’s still unbelievable that we were spared,” Miller exclaimed.

He is married to Kristen Broomfield Miller for more than 16 years, and their union has produced one son, Liam-Draycen Miller.