Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Grow­ing up in Bar­rack­pore, where his par­ents worked as cane farm­ers, Dr Sharaz Khan learnt ear­ly that suc­cess was not sim­ply about how far one trav­elled in life, but about re­mem­ber­ing where the jour­ney be­gan.

To­day, as a mem­ber of the Roy­al Col­lege of Emer­gency Med­i­cine and founder and chair­man of the NGO Lega­cy Lift Ini­tia­tive, Khan is draw­ing on those hum­ble be­gin­nings to help young men at his for­mer school, AS­JA Boys’ Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do, over­come chal­lenges and re­alise their po­ten­tial.

His jour­ney is one shaped by ed­u­ca­tion, en­dur­ing friend­ships and the be­lief of peo­ple who recog­nised his promise, some­times be­fore he ful­ly recog­nised it him­self.

“My par­ents en­cour­aged me to reach my fullest po­ten­tial with­out ever mak­ing me feel pres­sured to be­come some­thing for their sake,” Khan re­called. “They gave me the free­dom to dis­cov­er what I was ca­pa­ble of while in­still­ing in me the val­ues of hard work and hu­mil­i­ty.”

Leav­ing his com­mu­ni­ty to at­tend sec­ondary school in San Fer­nan­do ex­posed him to peo­ple from dif­fer­ent back­grounds and broad­ened his un­der­stand­ing of the world.

At AS­JA Boys’ Col­lege, he formed friend­ships that have last­ed well be­yond the class­room and de­vel­oped re­la­tion­ships with teach­ers who be­came life­long men­tors.

They did more than ed­u­cate him. They helped him see pos­si­bil­i­ties for his fu­ture and sup­port­ed him through im­por­tant de­ci­sions, fur­ther op­por­tu­ni­ties and dif­fi­cult mo­ments.

“Look­ing back, I re­alise that AS­JA was a place where I found peo­ple who be­lieved in me,” he said.

“Their be­lief helped me be­gin to recog­nise my own po­ten­tial, while my up­bring­ing has kept me ground­ed.”

Years lat­er, that ex­pe­ri­ence of be­ing sup­port­ed would be­come cen­tral to his de­sire to give some­thing back.

The idea of es­tab­lish­ing Lega­cy Lift Ini­tia­tive had been on Khan’s mind for some time. How­ev­er, he ini­tial­ly ques­tioned whether he had the re­sources, time and cer­tain­ty need­ed to make it work.

Then came a con­ver­sa­tion dur­ing a vis­it to Trinidad that changed his per­spec­tive.

A mem­ber of staff at AS­JA Boys’ Col­lege told him that some stu­dents were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing se­ri­ous dif­fi­cul­ties at home, strug­gling with ba­sic ne­ces­si­ties that many peo­ple take for grant­ed.

“That con­ver­sa­tion was all I need­ed to know,” Khan said.

He be­gan ques­tion­ing why he should wait un­til every­thing in his own life was per­fect­ly or­gan­ised be­fore re­spond­ing to a need that al­ready ex­ist­ed.

“I re­alised that mak­ing a dif­fer­ence does not nec­es­sar­i­ly be­gin with hav­ing all the an­swers. Some­times, it be­gins with recog­nis­ing a need and be­ing will­ing to re­spond.”

For Khan, the con­cern goes be­yond fi­nan­cial hard­ship. He wor­ries about stu­dents who may ar­rive at school hun­gry, lack es­sen­tial items or silent­ly strug­gle with cir­cum­stances that af­fect their con­fi­dence, con­cen­tra­tion and abil­i­ty to learn.

He al­so re­mem­bers a close friend whose home sit­u­a­tion be­came so dif­fi­cult dur­ing their school years that he had nowhere to live and had to de­pend on an­oth­er friend for ac­com­mo­da­tion.

That friend even­tu­al­ly be­came a pro­fes­sion­al and built a fam­i­ly of his own. Yet the ex­pe­ri­ence left Khan re­flect­ing on the im­por­tance of time­ly in­ter­ven­tion and the dif­fer­ence one per­son’s kind­ness can make.

“What seems small to us may be the very thing that helps some­body keep go­ing,” he said.

Through Lega­cy Lift Ini­tia­tive, Khan hopes to pro­vide sup­port that al­lows stu­dents to pur­sue their am­bi­tions with­out be­ing de­fined by the cir­cum­stances in­to which they were born.

He ac­knowl­edges that build­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion has brought mo­ments of doubt and frus­tra­tion, but says its pur­pose con­tin­ues to dri­ve him for­ward.

His am­bi­tion is not sim­ply to pro­duce doc­tors, lawyers or oth­er suc­cess­ful pro­fes­sion­als. He wants young men to find ful­fil­ment, de­vel­op em­pa­thy and even­tu­al­ly ex­tend the same sup­port to oth­ers.

“If, ten years from now, these young men are hap­py, com­pas­sion­ate, mo­ti­vat­ed and con­tribut­ing pos­i­tive­ly to so­ci­ety, I would con­sid­er that a tremen­dous achieve­ment,” he said.

Ul­ti­mate­ly, Khan hopes his lega­cy will be mea­sured not by his qual­i­fi­ca­tions or pro­fes­sion­al ti­tles, but by the op­por­tu­ni­ties he helps cre­ate.