From abandoned child to mentor - Garth Staple steering youth in right direction

After being abandoned by his parents as a newborn, Garth Staple had a difficult childhood.

But despite his struggles, Staple, 51, decided to use his adversities to strengthen him, becoming the parent he never had, not only to his children, but to many others. Staple, who hails from May Pen, Clarendon, said that while growing up, he never knew his relatives from either side of his family, which was difficult to endure.

"I grow up as an orphan child, and it always something that I was stressing over. I questioned, 'Why me?'" Staple said.

"I was wondering why is it that all of my friends have mother and father but I don't have one," he added. Staple was among the participants at yesterday's launch of the Men Who Mentor programme at the Jamaica Conference Centre in downtown Kingston, put on by the National Parenting Support Commission. He told THE STAR that he met his mother at age 13, but she said she could not care for him. He met his father at age 30, but he never developed a relationship or a bond with either.

"I couldn't let it deter me from being who I wanted to be, and so I decided that it was not going to determine who I am, or how I think of myself. And when I became a father, I was determined to break the retribution and change all a that by just being the better version of father that I didn't have," said Staple, who has two sons, one daughter and two stepsons.

However, after recognising that many young people in his community were struggling with abandonment like he did, Staple decided that he had to also step up for those youngsters.

"These youth need us to really pull them back and set them on a firm footing because they standing on slippery path; and once yuh slip, yuh slide," Staple said, adding that young people have a great deal of challenges to navigate in today's society.

"There are so many things happening, so many things that can lead the youth astray. You have youth that are well educated, but they are thieves. You have youth with a lot of mental issues, you have youth that have morally decayed over time. So they don't have any values, they don't have no virtues whatsoever," Staple explained.

With all this in mind, in 2017, Staple decided to join the Violence Prevention Alliance as a mentor, and so far, he has helped more than 100 youth from his community.

"Whatever needs to be done, I am willing to do it, including talking with them to reset their mindset, or equipping them with the toolsets and the skills for their own development," Staple said, adding that he has assisted his mentees with their education.

"I have one at HEART and he wants to be a mixologist, and I've been mentoring him from he was a baby, because his father was a gangster and he's now in prison. At one point he messed up and was a ward of the State, then he came back into the space. I decided to take him on because he has a vision to change his life. I knew I could help him realise he does not have to be the same product of what his father is," Staple said. He said that he has come to recognise that most troubled youth only need guidance, and opined that if more men were mentors, it would make a significant difference in society.

"You don't need a programme to do this. All it takes is wanting the best for your child, and wanting the best for other children out there," Staple said.