Small pulling on ISSA experience .... - to represent St James South

Although his political life is still in its infancy, Dr Walton Small believes that he will bring a wealth of knowledge to representational politics as he seeks to become the member of parliament for St James South in the September 3 General Elections.

The former principal of Wolmers Boys' School told STAR Sports that he would be particularly pulling from his experience as a six-term president of the Inter- Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA), to bring organisation and structure to his constituency in order to help his people lead productive lives.

According to Small, running an association such as ISSA, which comprises principals of secondary schools from across the island, requires detailed planning and communication to ensure that all the stakeholders are satisfied.

"ISSA is an organisation that deals with sports across the island and therefore to organise something like that you would have to get the input of all the stakeholders. One of the the things that I said that I would do before I became president of ISSA was that I would make sure that everyone would have an input," he said.

"And therefore we put systems in place that would allow all the principals from across the island to have an input in the running of sports in schools.

PROPER ORGANISATION

I have now walked into the constituency and I have realised that we need to organise in a way that will allow the individuals to know what is happening and to have their input. I am looking to have the same level of organisation ."

Small's 13-year tenure as ISSA president came to an end a year ago as he retired from the classroom. Soon after, it was announced that he would be the People's National Party's candidate for St James South.

"How I plan to represent the people is to create a council that will be made up of people from the communities within the constituency, and within each of the four divisions there will be sub-committees and that will allow us to hear the people's concerns," he explained.

Although he is a newcomer, Small knows well that it will be hard to source funds from the Government to take care of all of the matters of his constituents and hence he plans to utilise a skill he also acquired while he was president of ISSA -- the ability to market a product in order to attract sponsorship.

"The other thing that I recognise in ISSA is that you have to invest in your own product before you can get people to come on board. I would say to my committee that we have some funds and we are going to invest in our football to make it more attractive so that when corporate Jamaica sees what is happening they would want to come on board," he outlined.

"My plan is not just to wait on the Government to do things. There non-governmental agencies that we can make proposals to in order to get some investments in our communities ourselves and when we start doing that private sector organisations will come in."