Jewel Massiah lives life with purpose

A HERO is sometimes depicted as someone whose identity remains a secret, as they run around in a cape doing good deeds.

However, today a real hero is often an individual admired for their courage, selflessness and noble qualities. Someone who is willing to take risks or make sacrifices to help others, while achieving a noble goal.

Our heroes of today live in our communities, and some of them we may know personally, but there are those who we have probably just heard about.

So in the coming weeks we will highlight several U-Reporters, young people who are a part of Unicef's flagship digital platform raising their voices on issues affecting them, who are heroes in their own right and have been doing exceptional things in their communities toward amplifying the voice of the youth of TT through their varied areas of specialty.

Today, we feature youth advocate Jewel Massiah.

JEWEL MASSIAH is on a quest advocating for young people to have safe spaces for hard conversations that might otherwise have been internalised to society's detriment.

This 20-year-old dynamic youth advocate believes that allowing young people to discuss their emotions freely will help them reach their greatest potential.

Through workshops, she has been helping youths with adolescent and adulthood challenges.

"I want people to understand that we are made with purpose, and where purpose is misunderstood or ambiguous, it is inevitable," she told Newsday during a cellphone interview recently.

"We may think that our lives are over or not going how we want. But the truth is we have not found purpose yet."

To any young person who might be despondent, she said: "My advice is to seek purpose. Ask yourself: Why am I here? What do I love? Where do I feel like I belong? The journey of figuring that out, for me, is where you find that relief."

"It is not easy to find out why we are here, but that is why we have these resources, people who can help us along that journey."

The Mt Lambert resident is a content creator, author of two published books, poet and business owner.

The former student of Bishop Anstey High School East, in Trincity, charged that wanting to know why people are here and what they can give to this world that no one else can is a personal decision.

"We have so much to talk about and tend to internalise it. In the Caribbean, we do a lot of internalising and not enough expressing," Massiah said.

She believes the problems of internalising start in the home.

"Parents have a lot going on and sometimes forget the children become teens and have feelings and ideas. The things that parents go through actively affect the child.

"A lot of things are happening, and no one is pausing to find out how it might affect their children. We then grow into adults who do not speak about how things impact us."

She began youth workshops with professionals like therapists to address these issues and give young people their say among their peers.

Massiah, a member of the Church of the Nazarene, recalled that she initially started workshops with church groups, and with time, they evolved.

Apart from Trinidad, she has participated in workshops in Tobago, Barbados and Guyana.

"People volunteer, come together and make it happen. The most frequent response I get from youths is, 'I feel understood,'" Massiah said.

"When they come to the workshops and listen to others, they say they thought they were the only ones who felt or experienced this. But then they came and felt understood and heard."

While in secondary school, she completed her first book, Growing Pains: Wisdom From A Teenaged Sage which was published in August 2020.

It speaks about the twists and turns of being a teenager and the importance of God's guidance in navigating this period.

"It is about the process of coming into your own, all the ups and downs that come with it and discovering oneself. The book came out when she was in form four. It was difficult," she recalled.

"It helped to have my target audience around me. It was in high school that I was able to start honest conversations. I looked for and found like-minded people to express ideas."

Massiah said she had been writing poetry for most of her life. At 14, her mother suggested that she compile her poems.

"I worked on that for two years. When I turned 16, it evolved into so much more than just a compilation of poetry. It became me telling my life stories as an example, giving the advice that I have burnt and learnt," she said.

From her experience, sometimes young people do not like to receive these life lessons from older people, assuming they just do not want youngsters to have experiences.

"I believe their guard would be down because it was coming from one teen to the next. They conclude she would be genuine.

Her second book, HeartHealed was published in September 2023. As the name suggests, it is about the process of healing a broken heart.

Broken heart, she quickly added, could come from so much more than just romance.

She said, "There is the heartbreak of dreams that you thought would come true, of personal relationships, and of generational curses."

At the workshops, Massiah uses excerpts from her books to explore topics such as self-love, purpose, and parent-child relationships.

"It is a safe space. We use a blended approach like theatre, poetry, and movement therapy, which I find is the best way to deal with heavy things when it comes to young people."

On her business, Massiah Marketing, Massiah said she first learned about marketing and social media at 15 through a project with the NGO Making a Difference.

Being the "baby of the group," she was tasked with handling the social media aspect of the project. With time, she developed skills and completed various courses online.

Massiah said, "I got my first job in marketing in 2020. By the middle of 2021, I opened my own business. It started with doing presentations. It now includes graphics, photography, videography services and a bigger team."

She hopes to inspire young people and create awareness of the resources available to them, including the U-report platform.

U-report is a free social monitoring tool for community participation designed to address issues young people care about.

To learn more about Massiah and her work, people can visit her Instagram page @MassiahJewel.