GROWING up in Nannyville Gardens, a St Andrew community plagued by violence, Yanique Tracy could have easily fallen prey to her environment.

Instead, she chose to band together with like-minded peers to form the Nannyville Uprising Youth Action Club, which, she says, has propelled her to unimaginable heights of success.

“As young as 14 and 15 years old, my peers in the community, we really felt restless. We didn’t have much to look at, so we went to the one person we saw who was doing some progressive things in the community, and that person was our Justice of the Peace Samantha Harvey. She pushed for us to get a youth club in the community,” said Tracy.

That was how the young woman’s advocacy journey started.

“My hunger grew for more and I wanted to want more,” she told the Jamaica Observer.

Tracy said she faced numerous obstacles as the daughter of a single mother, including limited access to resources and financial constraints. However, she was determined to prove to young people in her community that success is attainable, while helping to build her community in the process.

She said the club hosted various youth development seminars and community initiatives aimed at bringing about peace and uplifting the residents of Nannyville. These initiatives motivated her to complete fifth form a second time and acquire the subjects needed to pursue an associate’s degree at Excelsior Community College in arts and humanities.

“I was the public relations officer for the youth club, and I was the one who was going out to do the interviews. I was the first interviewee on Talk Up Yout, and we talked about community stigmatisation. Through that channel, a lot of doors opened up through volunteering and youth work,” said Tracy.

Driven by her hunger for more, she applied to The Mico University College where she pursued a bachelor’s degree in applied science and counselling psychology education in 2020, before going on to complete an executive master’s degree in educational management in 2023.

On the advocacy side of things, Tracy became a member of Jamaica’s Youth Parliament, coordinating, reporting, and training youth Members of Parliament for parliamentary sittings. She was also appointed co-chair of the National Youth Advisory Council in 2021 through which she engaged people in youth development policy and programming actions with the Ministry of Education and Youth.

“As co-chair I had a lot of networking opportunities, and that is the reason why I became affiliated with the International Republican Institute (IRI), which is a non-partisan, non-profit group based in Washington, DC. Their main focus is championing democracy and advancing democracy across the world, inclusive of human rights, health, and globalisation,” she told Sunday Observer.

She eventually became an IRI Caribbean Policy Youth Fellow and member of IRI’s flagship youth network, Generation Democracy (GenDem), through which she interacted with young leaders impacting change across the world.

“It has just been a ripple effect, because after that I was pushed to apply for the prestigious Senator John McCain Fellowship for Freedom, which had thousands of applicants and only eight persons were selected. I was a part of that eight as the first Caribbean national to be invited to such an important fellowship,” said Tracy.

“To me, it was like, ‘Wow, look at how many doors have opened for me.’ If you told me when I was a teenager that I would be in the position that I am right now, I wouldn’t believe anybody unless God came down and told me that this is your life; I wouldn’t believe it,” she said.

Tracy credited her youth club for her success, speaking of the impact similar spaces can have on youth across Jamaica.

“My youth club changed my life and my peers’ lives. It was so impactful that my peers that lived in my community, all, if not most of us, we went to college, we got our education. We’re young professionals — nurses, doctors, teachers, lawyers, business personnel,” she shared.

“Because I know that type of saving grace exists, I would like that to be a nationwide knowledge, to let people know that through these mechanisms and through these channels we can alleviate the current system that we have when it comes on to young people,” she reasoned.

She added: “Throughout all my experiences, one thing that I’ve always kept constant is that I always leave the door open for the person who’s coming behind me. I always want to get Jamaican young people in the mix, get them to be a part of this global network, because it’s very important that we understand that there is a whole big world out there that is beyond our little shores.”

Now the founder of Tracy’s Training and Consulting Services, she uses her expertise to equip young leaders and employees with solutions — including behavioural management, human capital development, business strategy management, and educational consulting — that they need to contribute to the productivity side of business and national development.

In a message to the youth in Nannyville and across Jamaica, she said:

“There were a lot of times when I was down on my face, waiting for someone else to come and pick me up and help me up, but they never came. I learned a lesson that I had to do it. Somewhere down the line people will come around, but I don’t believe in anyone waiting on anyone else to do what they need to do for you.

“You are the author and finisher of your story. Become the best version of yourself through picking yourself up and elevating yourself to the place where you want to be. “Will it be difficult? Yes. Will you fail? Yes, most definitely, you will fail,” she said laughing. “But what you’re not going to do is that when you fall you’re not going to stay down. If you have to crawl to get up, crawl to get up. If you have to hold on to an old piece of chair to get up, hold on to it and get up, because there’s nobody that will love you, support you, encourage you, and lift you up than you will,” she stressed.