Food for the Poor helps Cordell Green, 25 y-o medical student at UWI...An absentee father put a strain on the family, and his mother had to raise goats and sell goods on weekends to earn a meagre income for the family to survive.

By AINSWORTH MORRIS Career & Education writer  Sunday, November 16, 2014    

THE charming smile reserved for patients on the wards at the Kingston Public Hospital would have, up to recently, belied the struggles Cordell Green was facing.

Cordell Green (left) accepts his scholarship cheque from
Food for the Poor executive director David Mair.

But Green was always a fighter, and even the prospect of not being able to complete medical school didn't make his energy falter.

The 25-year-old final-year medical student at the University of the West Indies (UWI) had always struggled, from the time he was a boy growing up in Buff Bay, Portland, raised by his mother with five siblings who alternated going to school because of poor finances.

An absentee father put a strain on the family, and his mother had to raise goats and sell goods on weekends to earn a meagre income for the family to survive.

With the little they earned, Green said he and his siblings took turns on weekdays to attend Buff Bay Primary School.

After sitting his grade six exit exams, young Green got a place at Annotto Bay High School in St Mary, but his mother told him she couldn't afford secondary schooling.

He decided to contact his father with the news, with the hope of getting assistance.

"My father said he would assist me only if I came to live with him and attend Happy Grove High School in Portland. I got the transfer, but to my surprise, I went to live with my grandmother in St Thomas. I had to assist her with selling, but I still did not attend school as often as I should have. I was not at the reading level that I should be, and I was failing at most of my subjects," said Green, who was last week awarded a scholarship from Food for the Poor Jamaica to complete his studies. more