“ICON for black women.”
This is how the Maynard Institute, a nationally recognised media development and journalism training centre for young Blacks in and out of California that was founded by Robert Bob Maynard, the son of a Barbadian from St. Lucy, described Susan Taylor.
She is known as the driving force behind Essence Magazine for almost a quarter of a century.
But there is more, much more to Susan Taylor than the fact that she was the fashion editor and later editor-in-chief of Essence.
Taylor is the great-granddaughter of Suzanna Pickering, a Bajan from St James, who married a police officer in Barbados whose last name was Brathwaite.
Today she is among America’s leading advocates for mentoring of young people of colour.
The 69-year-old celebrity recently said there was an urgent need in Barbados and the rest of the Caribbean for mentors to give some of their time to help guide poor and troubled youth in and out of the region.
“There is a critical need for mentoring throughout the Caribbean, Barbados included. What I love about the model is that mentoring creates miracles in the lives of even the most challenged youth. What young people need is to have someone who really cares about them and have their best interest at heart.
“We have so many parents in the US, the Caribbean, Africa and other parts of the world who really can’t take care of their children well. And for a host of reasons,” she said.
“Poverty quite easily brings with it depression, drug or alcohol addiction, mental illness and a host of other things that overwhelm many parents. You have parents working two and three jobs, disproportionately single mothers and the war on drugs in the US forced children on their own as their parents were being incarcerated. You can see that it is happening in the Caribbean as well. There is the proliferation of media in the Caribbean. I say the Caribbean is ripe for mentoring” she added.
Taylor pinpointed the churches, community organisations, schools, and fraternal bodies in Barbados and elsewhere, as institutions that were ideally suited to join the mentoring movement.
Today, the work she started has blossomed into the National Cares Mentoring Movement with affiliates in almost 60 US cities. She would like to see it take hold in Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, St Kitts-Nevis and their neighbours.
“My roots are in the Caribbean, Barbados included, and the Caribbean culture is at the core of who I am,” she said. “My great-grandmother was from Barbados. I feel very blessed to have those traditional Caribbean values which are very similar to African-American values.”
Born in Harlem, Taylor, an entrepreneur at heart, defines mentors as inspirers.
“A mentor is a challenger who shows up consistently. Children are so used to being disappointed. A mentor is one who speaks life into the heart and soul of a young person and helps him or her to understand their value and that they can succeed. You know young people say all the time that adults never talk about their own faults, the missteps we made when we were young people. The youth need examples of people like us who can say to them, ‘I am not perfect but this is how I changed my life and got on the right path.”
Taylor sees the actions of youth as a cry for help and believes that’s where mentors come in.
Tony Best is the Nation’s North American correspondent. Email Bestra@aol.com.
