ONE SATURDAY HE WAS A YOUNG, successful engineer, the next a homeless vagrant. But network planner for SOL Western Caribbean Nicholas Waithe was being a bum for a cause – to help those in dire financial straits.
The former Alleyne School student was the face of the Homeless For 24 Project, an undertaking which was done to open the eyes of those blind to the state of homelessness.
And Nicholas said though his day in the world of a vagrant taxed him both mentally and physically, he was glad to drive home the point to Barbadians that living without a house and being disowned by family is a sad but true reality.
What would compel someone to give up the comforts of this world, swapping them for 24 hours of discomfort?
Well, everything Nicholas does is done purposefully, even if painfully, and the health buff told EASY magazine how he became intrigued to help those in need.
“Growing up in St James I saw charity at home. My grandmother (Tabitha Waithe) would bake sweetbread, cake and pudding to give out to people in the neighbourhood,” he said. “My dad (Cecil Waithe), if anyone asked him for anything and he had it, he would give if he could.”
That very same household of his grandmother and being around such caring family impacted his life’s goal of wanting to become a humanitarian one day, the tech lover said.
And the Rotarian has a vision of a more organised effort to aid homeless people one day through a unified body.
But he insists his call for unification may just very well be the engineer in him beckoning structure to take centre stage.
Waithe reasoned that as a person who follows rules he was bound for his chosen career path.
“I hardly stepped out of bounds as an adolescent, due to being a strict follower of given rules . . . . My challenge came, though, with being the person that my parents wanted me to be. I always wanted to get good grades in primary school and pushed myself so much in secondary school that I was the top male student in academics,” he explained.
In 1998 after graduating from The Alleyne School, he went on to complete the course in building and civil engineering at the Barbados Community College.
Building on his love for things mathematical, Nicholas then decided to pursue his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine campus.
It was from there that the middle child (one older brother and a younger sister) routed the path to his current success.
He did disclose that life has not always dealt him the best cards but asserted that when the going gets tough he gets tougher and manages to overcome any obstacle.
Civil Engineer Nicholas Waithe explains to this young lady that he is part of the Homeless for 24 Project and proceeded to tell her about the hidden camera which captured her kind gesture of donating money.
“We have been through challenges before, but guess what?” he said. “We are still standing. When something gets rough I don’t get depressed and [allow] it to drag me down because it was proven from the time I was a kid that I’ve encountered challenges and I have always gotten over them.”
The self-confessed positive thinker said that he lives along the lines of the motto, “Being strong especially when it is the only option available”.
And the 33-year-old advises young professionals to think outside the box in pursuit of excellence.
Nicholas said youths should never wait on handouts or to be solely dependent on people to help them get through life.
“The life you want could be done from a basic skill set which has nothing to do with working in an organisation.” (MR)