Shawna-Kaye Lester
Hello, I am Shawna-Kaye, thanks for stopping by the site. I learnt about the Childnet Academy for the first time when a friend of mine entered the competition and won. It so happened that as a part of the duties I had at a summer job that same year, I had to cover a press conference about 'an internet academy that would be staged in Jamaica in 2005'. Sure enough I attended, wrote promos about the 2005 competition and considered entering.
I thought of a website where young people could share stories of how education (something I value dearly) was changing their lives and about any risks they had ever taken in life. Most of my Jamaican friends were like me, working hard for what they wanted; then I got to Bates and saw that it was the same for many people from India, Vietnam, Nepal, Trinidad, Sweden, Rwanda and many other places...I really wanted to tell these stories.
Being cramped with work, I almost never had time to enter the competition because I kept thinking "it's just an idea anyway." One day though as I was listening to the radio, I heard this song and the words were as if they were my own from my own mouth:
"Building with a hundred floors, swinging round revolving doors, maybe I don't know where they'll take me but gotta keep moving on, moving on, fly away, break away..."
It was the theme song from the movie Princess Diaries 2, Breakaway, by Kelly Clarkson. I passed the idea by a friend, Trang, and found out that she had already built a website with a similar focus - mentoring Vietnamese youngsters. I entered.
Being a part of the Academy was fabulous (nowhere like Mobay!) and it was there that I met a UK genius named Rob Wright, the one who has so willingly supported me in the most tangible way of building this whole thing! I can't believe how excited he is about this and how wholeheartedly he has adopted this project. Thank you Rob.
Please enjoy the site and share your stories with us.