Calabar Alumni Urged to support school's development

Former Jamaica Prime Minister and Calabar High School old boy P.J. Patterson is urging alumni chapters in Canada and the rest of the Diaspora to consider supporting specific development projects as the 103-year-old institution seeks to regain its status as one of the schools of choice for Kingston boys.

Founded by the Jamaica Baptist Union for children of Baptist ministers and underprivileged Black male students, Calabar has produced eminent men of distinguished ability, including Rhodes scholars Dr. Franklyn Prendergast, who serves as a consultant at the Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics and the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota; Florida-based orthopaedic surgeon, Michael Abrahams and lawyer, Rudolph Smellie.

To mark the centenary, the boys’ school rolled out a strategic plan that embraces a review of the academic curriculum and the restoration of the library, classrooms, laboratories and other equipment and services.

“The overseas chapters have to help us with this,” Patterson said at the Calabar Old Boys Association (Canada) summer benefit luncheon concert last Sunday in Brampton. “We want to continue to hone boys of promise to become men of steel, to convert those who are filled with doubt in their own potential so that they become pilgrims of progress. We have to continue to provide opportunity for boys no matter where they come from, be they less privileged communities or families of unlimited means. We have to help them transform their own lives and in so doing point the wider society towards self-fulfillment.

“In today’s world, no one has the option to be parochial or insular. Every student needs to excel beyond the domestic level in order to acquire the necessary skills to compete successfully in the global marketplace. Now that Calabar has completed its first century, we still have an obligation to provide for every student to grow in knowledge and morale stature that will enable each of them to fulfil his passion and realize his full potential to build a better, stronger, peaceful and more prosperous nation.”