Jeanette Calder’s advocacy

BORN in Kingston and raised in a little known community called Copse in Hanover, young Jeanette Calder remembers parents Joel and Jean being the ones to instill in their three children the importance of giving back.

Her parents, teachers by profession, embraced their roles in Hanover to serve children – Joel became a children’s officer who was then promoted to superintendent of Copse Place of Safety; and Jean worked in the Family Court system, becoming a children’s officer and later a probation officer, and between the two of them, changed the lives of scores of boys who came under their care.

“Just the kind or people they were, they raised me to see people who don’t get seen. I was raised to see the invisible people – they saw them and they made connections with them, and that’s a major part of why I do what I do and who I am today,” Calder told All Woman last week.

The executive director of Jamaica Accountability Meter Portal (JAMP), a non-partisan, not-for-profit company dedicating itself to improved governance in Jamaica, Calder is known to Jamaicans as the woman who has been very vocal on governance issues, in particular those relating to procurement, corruption and public sector reform.

It was actually her work in the public sector that opened her eyes to the challenges to effective public sector management, and one project in particular, which deepened her appreciation for responsive public service delivery.

“Working in Government did help me to determine where my [career] interest really lies and it really was in helping people,” she said.

She recalled working in the Ministry of Housing, where her biggest success was helping with a squatter development of about 40 families,  who needed assistance with being regularised.

“It wasn’t so much the housing solution that made me grab it, it was the needs of the people,” she shared. “There was not a lot of interest in it in the ministry, but I started, Food for the Poor came in and assisted with relocating and providing the houses, but they had no light, water or sewage.”

She said when she left the ministry in 2006 she was right on the cusp of making some progress for the families, and worked pro bono after leaving to complete the project.

“I was able to complete getting in the water with the help of the National Water Commission and getting in the light with the help of the Rural Electrification Board, and I remember the deep sense of satisfaction it gave me when I could just picture as a woman, what it would be like for a mother to have light, for young ladies to be able to have a bath at that certain time, and it still is today the thing that gives me the most satisfaction.”

The move to start JAMP could be seen then as a natural segue – it’s designed with citizens in mind, who are interested in governance, but need help navigating the structure.

Founded in 2018, JAMP tracks, measures and exposes accountability issues in Government. The online portal, implemented in partnership with the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica and funded with the support of the European Union, seeks to place in the hands of citizens, media, academia and Government an accountability tool to strengthen public oversight mechanisms and improve stewardship over public resources and assets.

“I have no time to waste,” Calder insisted when asked if her work may be an activity in futility, knowing Jamaica’s political structure and history. “The only reason I’m choosing to do this is because I’m 100 per cent convinced that [with regards to ] the issue of the orange and green,  Jamaica has really shifted beyond it. What is exciting is that I believe we have been denied an opportunity to have a basic understanding of how government runs – the basic machinery; and how the Parliament runs – what they do for us, and what is their role. The only reason I was able to take the interest that I had in my country and invest it in something like this is because I got an opportunity to understand these two things.”

So sure is she that she has indeed found the role she’s destined for, that she explained the huge transitions she has made to arrive where she is now.

The Mt Alvernia and Wolmer’s alumna actually doesn’t have formal training in governace – rather,  she was an architecture major  who had switched to that science after deciding that law wasn’t indeed her calling.

“All my life I thought I was going to do law,  but by the end of high school I was no longer feeling the profession, and so I started working as a teller at Scotiabank until I could figure out what I wanted,” she laughed.

This “figuring out” took longer than young Calder expected and she was at the bank for three years. Then one day an architectural firm came to install an ABM, the first time they were entering the space, “and I remember walking outside, standing over this blueprint on the ground and I looked at it and said wow this looks fascinating, and the next thing you know I was doing archictecture.”

It didn’t hurt that the young lady was also in love with a young engineer at CAST (now UTech) at the time, and had an uncle who was a contractor, so she “talked” her way into the competitive Caribbean School of Architecture, armed with her GCE grades.

“It was an act of faith; I applied to the school which was extraordinarily competitive at the time and I rememberd that you were to attend your interview with a piece of art; you had to come prepared to convince the panel that you were creative – you’d bring a sculpture, some artwork, or if you worked, as some people did, for architects, you’d bring some design. Jeanette turned up with a little envelope with her GCE results so there was this big joke for the four years of UTech that Jeanette talked her way into that acceptance.”

She said it was an amazing experience, even though by second year she knew she was not going to be an architect and only practised the craft for a year in the field, before going to do her master’s in Caribbean architecture in the Dominican Republic, then worked in Government for six years.

After leaving the public service she went on to the Institute for Housing and Urban Development, Erasmus University, The Netherlands, where she did an MSc in Urban Management and Development.

She returned home in 2012 on the invitation of the Development Bank of Jamaica to assist with their public-private partnership policy, the area she specialised in as a consultant in the Netherlands.

“I came back home excited to be back in the public sector and while waiting on the job there were a number of mega infrastructure projects that the People’s National Party (PNP) was doing and I had a serious problem with how they were approaching it. And I’d heard about the Jamaica Civil Society Coalition (JCSC) at the time and I decided I would help them to understand what was not being done correctly, and that is how I got into advocacy. I started to break down procurement rules and why the minister was doing us an injustice, and I fell in love with advocacy, and I’ve not really looked back,” she outlined.

Being a member of the JCSC between 2012 and 2016 meant that Calder was mentored by some of the best and committed advocates, and her work at JAMP means she’s standing on their shoulders and efforts.

In 2018 JAMP was born, supported by members of the JCSC.

“For a number of years when I was interested in governance, I didn’t know how to demonstrate that interest,” she said. “And I am convinced that there are a lot of Jeanettes out there who simply don’t know how to make their voices heard in an effective manner.”

Ironically, she became an advocate when the PNP administration was in power, and she sought to highlight this both because, “when you become an advocate a number of Jamaicans assume that there is an ulterior [political] motive;  and her mentor, motivator and friend is Opposition Senator Donna Scott-Mottley.

“My friendship with Donna spans the last 17 years. It is very, very important that those who politicise everything appreciate that this friendship long exceeds my time as an advocate and her time back in direct politics,” Calder emphasised.

 “As a committed member of the PNP, Donna has a close friend who’s an advocate who was is critical of the PNP; it takes somebody who’s mature, objective and wise to be my mentor and motivator when the things she loves most is the thing that I was actually being critical of. It has placed tension on the friendship, but I think it has grown and benefited from that tension into mutual respect. We have the same love for the country, we have just gone at it in two different directions that had the potential to create clashes, but we have survived them all.”

By end of this month, JAMP hopes to provide Jamaicans with a total five useful tools towards better governance – a budget tool, procurement tool, account-a-meter, MP tracker, legislative tracker – to help us be better managers and supervisors.

“My faith rests in believing that if you give citizens these tools they will use it,” she said. “My faith rests in the fact that though our public officials and our political leaders can be very irresponsible, they can be responsive when the people of Jamaica lean in.

“I’m expecting by year end to see empirical data that suggests that the citizens are using the tools, they’re becoming more confident, they’re understanding the play of things better. When I get Jamaicans to embrace and to realise what it took me too long to learn as a Jamaican, that I am the employer and the Cabinet are my employees, the day that I get that mindset to shift in the minds of Jamaicans that our election process is a job recruitment process, that is when I believe that JAMP can sit back. The minute that mind shift takes place, then that will change governance and the quality of our lives. That’s my goal,” she said.

Jeanette Calder doesn’t really rest when it comes to being tirelessly hopeful about improved public governance and accountability in Jamaica, but she said when she’s not working, she observes the Sabbath, which allows her to put the work down for at least 24 hours.

“My faith as a Christian is a huge part of what gives me the courage to do what I do,” she said.

“Whenever I come up on something that I’m afraid to try, I remember something my mother said to me, if I could find one person who’s doing what I think I could try to do, then it can be done. That has got me over everything.”