Susan Moore: Committed to service

SHE’S fondly called ‘principal’ or ‘teacher’, for never passing up an opportunity to share information which helps people grow holistically. In addition, she’s honest, open, friendly, down-to-earth, frank, and she will tell you that what you see is what you get as she doesn’t wear masks.

Born and raised on Whitehall Avenue, St Andrew, Susan Moore, 41, grew up in a humble environment where she faced great challenges. But the perseverance of her parents charted her resilience through life.

“I grew up in an environment where we were poor. We had challenges finding all the meals that were required for us to get through the day,” she told All Woman.

“The struggles my parents, who were both earning menial salaries, faced to send us to school or pay the school fees pushed us as a family to strive for better. But regardless, they were big on service and helping others.”

From her family’s determination and perseverance to break the cycle of poverty, Moore developed an undying love for people and service, which she honed as a teen at The Queen’s School.

“While in high school I was introduced to the Red Cross and we had a very wonderful patron who was also the school nurse. We learnt how to assist the less fortunate, we were taught first aid and they also wore a very smart uniform, which attracted me more to them,” Moore said. “Having seen how involved they were in the life of the school I decided to see how they operated. I was very quiet and saw it as an opportunity to meet more people and learn a skill.”

And so, with this opportunity Moore joined the Red Cross, began working alongside the school nurse, and found a passion for health care.

This passion grew deeper after Hurricane Gilbert devastated the island in 1988 and Moore and other youth members of the Red Cross were dispatched into communities to share messages sent to Jamaica from people overseas whose families were displaced.

“Those people thought we had done the world by sharing the messages with them. We also helped with some of the relief items and just to experience the gratitude of someone who needed support and was receiving it, it was cemented that I was never going to do anything else but help people, and even if I did do something else, it was going to be along the lines where I would have had that as a part of what I did or it was going to be,” she said.

As a result, she grew with the Red Cross and although she’s no longer the national youth chairman, she currently sits on the national executive.

When Moore graduated from high school she was still on a searching mission and worked as a ward clerk at the University Hospital of the West Indies where she became more exposed to health care and eventually became a dental nurse.

“While working in the field I started interacting more at the community level because you not only saw patients up to 18 years old where you were offering cleaning, filling, extraction and education, but you also needed to go in and tell the community why it was important to practise good oral hygiene. Interacting through community groups, PTA and students I wondered how I could go to the next step and started searching,” she said.

This desire to further help people led Moore in 2006 to pursue a master’s in public health with specialisation in health promotion from the University of the West Indies, a choice she doesn’t regret as it led her to Food For the Poor (FFP) Jamaica in 2008.

“I started at FFP as director of health care, which meant I had responsibilities for the health care programme — managing a clinic and a nursing home where people are living who have been abandoned or their families are unable to care for them. It also meant that I had to ensure the medical equipment and pharmaceutical supplies were allocated to the necessary entities such as schools, clinics and areas where they would serve people in the greatest need,” she said.

Now the director of recipient services at FFP, Moore manages additional units such as social outreach and infrastructure development, among other services available to those who receive aid from the institution.

With such a desire to help people, it is no surprise that her hobbies, apart from selecting and collecting music from different cultures, are meeting, talking and working with people.

“I do it so often that I enjoy it. The fulfilment comes whenever you are able to assist someone to meet a need, be it health or a home. It is also the response of people being helped. Some are verbal, while others are silent. Finding a resource to match needs is the gratification you get from it,” she said.

She added: “Seeing someone who received a benefit multiply that benefit is fulfilling. Knowing children are going to school because of support they received and that their grades have improved makes you sleep well.”

Her journey of service has also taken her to many places including Sweden, Italy and Mexico, be it for Red Cross or FFP at an international level to share the work that’s taking place.

For her achievements, she credits the support of her family, mentors and friends.

“If you have the interest in wanting to give support, plus a team of people willing to go the extra mile, then those are some of the things that push you, and make you want to give more than 100 per cent of what you do,” Moore said.

While she’s also a strong believer in being the change you want to see, she’s also big on giving thanks, no matter the depth of the challenges faced.