Donaree Muirhead – Youth advocate

DONAREE Muirhead has always been an activist and advocate for young people, a trait she attributes to the Maroon soil on which she was grounded.

Born and raised in Summer Hill, St James, also known as Maroon Town, Muirhead has been a youth development worker for seven years and is currently the community policing co-ordinator for the USAID COMET (Community Empowerment and Transformation) II project.

“I have always been the one to speak about issues affecting either myself or my colleagues in the community. It is most natural that I’d have been drawn into an area where I am in a position to better the conditions of young people,” she says. “I am a mouthy person. I am not silent on issues but I will speak up about things, good or bad. I have always had a voice. I was always selected to speak on behalf of either my Sunday school or class, plus I was always the one in the concerts or the recitals.”

And so it came as no surprise that by the time Muirhead got to secondary school, she held many leadership and advocate positions such as that of deputy head girl of Maldon High, a peer counsellor, student councillor, class monitor and house captain, even though she admits she was by no means athletic. However, she explains, “It goes back to people recognising qualities in me that I myself at the time may have been displaying unknowingly.”

After leaving secondary school Muirhead says she had a greater appreciation for her strengths after the hockey coach at Excelsior Community College encouraged her to join the team.

“I was walking past a training session and the coach called out to me and asked me if I was interested. Based on my body type he thought that I was a strong person or maybe I had endurance,” she says. “It proved to me that at any moment in time you can be called upon to serve, and my answering that call really proved that I’m always a willing person to serve. Since then every time I am called on, it reminds me that sometimes you really don’t see what you can contribute but others will recognise some strengths.”

Subsequently, having served young people since being in high school, she applied to the National Centre for Youth Development where she received a more structured setting and was groomed into understanding not just micro issues but youth issues on the global level.

Muirhead explained that her work with youth over the years is about understanding the individuals, where they’re at, issues that are bothering them, what they’re facing and making sure her interaction with them counts. She added that it’s about being a source of encouragement and helping young people gain access to opportunities that will benefit them.

Despite her drive for working with young people, Muirhead says while she’s told she has been impactful in the lives of youth, it’s mainly the other way around.

“They are the ones who’ve impacted me the most and have been my inspiration. Young people provide hope and no matter the conditions they are positive. They are always able to overcome. They are a motivation to themselves and their peers,” she says.

She’s also driven by what young people are often able to accomplish despite their circumstances.

“Young people sometimes don’t limit themselves. While there are negative things affecting them there are also positive things. They are excelling in sports, in academia and personal development,” she says. “Just how they themselves struggle to overcome inspires me each day to go back to work knowing a young person is sitting waiting to unravel their dreams and what’s happening in their life.”

Muirhead shares that a driving force for her to continue doing her work occurred in 2005 when she went through an ordeal fraught with irony.

“My father was murdered by three young people — the same young people I would work with, believe in and want the best for. It goes to show that while a lot is happening there are things that need to be remedied. It was a blow to me. Here I was working with young people, believing in them and their future, and you had three who would be impacting me in a negative way,” she says.

“But it never stopped me. Somebody had to continue working with them. You can’t save everybody. It made me think that work is there to be done. It blazed a bigger fire within me. It proved that no one is beyond the reach of crime and violence, and I had to continue doing what I had to do.”

Since then she has given her services wholeheartedly to the development of young people. Her current work with USAID allows her to work closely with young people and the police, which she says helps to build a better relationship between police, the community and youth in particular.

“In my previous position it was mostly one-on-one with young people. Now I work in a wider space as I help to create better communities for young people to live in. There are many negative perceptions about the police and young people as well, but there are positive things happening and I will continue to fly the flag for young people and the police in this regard,” Muirhead says.

Her role models are her mother, who she says has been a very influential force in her life; Maya Angelou, Oprah Winfrey, Nelson Mandela and the ordinary Jamaican woman who does what she has to do to survive in a dignified way while maintaining her integrity.

She lives by her own personal philosophy which states that one should eliminate fear and self-doubt, embrace passion, purpose and will.

“It came from a place where I was doubting myself and doubting everything I was doing, but at the same time others were calling on me. It also is that place you rise from to do exceptionally well. Embracing passion, purpose and will is what will take me to that other place in life.”