Nora Blake’s social work

NORA Blake is a living example that where you live does not have to define who you are. Born, and currently living in Rose Town, an inner-city community off Maxfield Avenue in St Andrew, where political violence has wreaked havoc on the lives of many and with gunshots and bloodshed having been commonplace, the eloquent and stylishly dressed Blake has risen above it all to be able to complete her bachelor’s degree at the University of the West Indies (UWI), become a flight attendant, and own her own real estate company.

But even these achievements are not enough for Blake, who also does a myriad of social work in the community.

She is now looking forward to doing her MBA in social work and giving more to the community, which she migrated from immediately after completing high school, and returned to in 2002.

“I was born in Maxfield and grew up there, and I guess you could say at the apex of the political war which would have been around ’79/80 was when I literally moved out of the community to go to school. I left right after high school and just before university,” she said, explaining that she lived on the UWI campus.

“My growing up years there was nothing like what I came back to.” Blake explained. “When I was growing up there it was a normal, regular community… there were people around me who were less fortunate but definitely not the level of deprivation that I see now.”

Now, one of the most alarming things for her is to see the number of children in the community who need an opportunity to be educated.

“What you have is a lot of children having children, so you have this whole heap of pickney,” Blake said. “In fact, when I came back here that was one of the first things that struck me. You saw all these children and it’s like you say ‘wait a second, children and school go together’, so you ask ‘why you not in school?’ And they would say ‘I don’t have any lunch money’ or whatever, and that is what got me going. The picture was wrong.”

Thus her social work began. Blake felt compelled to help these children get to school. This she did by using her own funding, funding from her network church, friends from corporate Jamaica and the Rotary Club of downtown Kingston.

“When I went back (to the community) my appeal to people was that $50 could make a difference to a child going to school. Because then $50 could at least get them something to eat. Those were the ones who didn’t need much but just walked to school, and on that basis it was an attainable goal.”

Now she asks for $150 to $200 for lunch for a child per day, between $30 to $60 for transportation, and then a contribution towards individual needs like school shoes, uniforms and text books.

And while there is the educational needs of children that should be met, Blake also points to other areas of their lives that need intervention.

“There is the simple thing of going to church. It is not uncommon for me to be taking 20 to 25 children on a Sunday to church. It’s just amazing how those children don’t have those basic things that we grew up with; the same things that helped to form our values and helped us to sort of identify ourselves and know what we couldn’t and shouldn’t do.”

It is this need to help that has led her to form the Greater Maxfield and National Pickney Foundation (GMNPF) a year ago. It allows for a more structured approach and has the ability to pull in more resources and give more people the opportunity to help.

She said the work that she does requires economic viability where business principles can be applied to achieve the goal of making the foundation work. As a result, Blake will be among the cohort of persons who will, for the first time in Jamaica, pursue a MBA in social work at UWI, having already completed her master’s in natural sciences.

“What I have found is that because I am not ‘downtown’ because I am not ‘ghetto’ then what I present, who I am — a lot of people who are my friends and associates find it easy to connect with me. And so they are very willing to help. It’s almost as if I can stretch my hands from Rose Town to uptown. That is what makes it so real.”

Blake’s activities also include taking the children in her community on trips as some of whom have never seen the outside of the community.

“When I first went there, there were children who did not know Half-Way-Tree,” she explained. “There were those who didn’t know anywhere really above Half-Way-Tree. And so that in itself may seem like nothing, but it’s a big thing.”

Her passion for children is so great that it has led her to adopt two from the community, one since birth and the other at three years old. They are now six and nine respectively.

“I wasn’t even looking for a child to adopt. First of all I am not married yet, plus I was trying to help generally,” she laughed. “I guess you could say my greatest achievement so far is my two children. They are gems.”

The woman, who attended the Greenwich Primary school, Holy Childhood High, and who studied natural sciences at UWI, is also a trained real estate broker with her own business, Nora Blake and Associates. She is also the public relations officer for the Rose Town Benevolent Centre, as well as a committee member sitting on the board for the Prince Charles Foundation.

It’s education, she says, that made her transcend the ghetto state of mind, and make people take a second look when they hear where she’s from.

“[I teach the children that] where you live does not have to define you. I say ‘look at me, I live here like you but you don’t have to talk that way, you don’t have to fight that way, you don’t have to behave that way,” she said.