Graham ... "I recognise that women play a very important role in maintaining peace. I want to work with them to help them in developing good parenting skills, developing livelihoods, and eventually economic independence."
Sitting in on a career session for youngsters at her church in one of Kingston's inner cities a few years ago, loans officer Alva Marie Graham felt a tad uncomfortable.
With a first degree in management studies from the University of the West Indies, and a technical teacher's diploma in business studies from the University of Technology, she had been high school teacher, college lecturer, and business manager.
The talk with the youngsters was all about starting out in new careers, with the usual motivational speech for antsy young students, raring to go make their mark.
Along with the young women and men present, Alva Graham wanted to start all over again.
The loans officer had worked as an accountant in the mortgage department of the Mutual Life insurance company (now Guardian Life).
Then, when Jamaica went through its financial meltdown in the mid-1990s, she was transferred from Mutual Life as part of the divestment team to FINSAC as senior marketing officer/loans officer with responsibility of transferring the mortgage portfolio from insurance company to building societies.
first female elder
For the mild-mannered Graham, married for 25 years (husband, Headley Mansfield Graham) and mother of one (Luzan), the real story of her life has involved a hectic mix of volunteer social work, secular job and church social commitments as elder and family life director at the Trench Town Seventh-day Adventist Church where she worships.
First elder in her home church, Alfonso Marshall, says Graham has worked in almost all departments of her church, and has created history in being recognised as the first female elder.
Some roles, she said, just came to her, literally.
Like the project she took on to help raise funds to send one inner-city youngster to nursing school.
"She had taken subjects and, coming from a poor background, decided to do nursing because someone told her she wouldn't have to pay. Unfortunately, when she got through, that was the very year that students were asked to pay, and now she was being asked to come up with $300,000, and that was just for the first year.
"Although she hadn't come to me (I heard through my daughter who was in charge of education and training at church), the Lord just planted her on my heart, and I said she needs someone to help her. I had to do something.
"So I basically wrote corporate Jamaica on my own, trying to get some help. At first it didn't seem to be happening, persons may have been turned off by the large figure so I decided to take it semester by semester."
social work career
There was also the visit Alva Graham made to look in on a brother whom she had not seen at church for a while, which ended up in her being drafted to 'counsel' a frustrated young mother and her seven-year-old daughter. It was incidents like these that fuelled Graham's yearning for something different.
At the end of the day's career session, Graham slipped over to ask the presenter one question:
"Can old people train for a career in social work?"
"Of course!" the presenter said.
That was 2005. In a few months, she resigned from FINSAC and headed off to university, a 52-year-old student.
Her plan? A career in social work.
"At the time I said to myself 'Are you crazy, how can you just resign'? But I am a person of faith, and God has made ways."
Looking back, she says it had to happen.
"I never did like to sit and work figures only. I like to meet people, and I don't necessarily like to be in the limelight - so this is really me." As for the possibility of less remuneration, she says, "Money is not my greatest motivation. I am passionate about what I do."
She said the session made her realise that she knew even less than she thought she did, and that to truly help she needed to be trained.
"Sometimes you think that you are helping by giving persons what you think they need, or what they ask, but you are not. You are enabling them, (but) instead of enabling them, you should empower them."
Now she is on a mission to do just that.
She was recently installed at 47 Beechwood Avenue in Kingston as the Women's Research and Outreach Centre's (WROC) community capacity building manager, and programme coordinator for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) violence reduction and sustainable development initiative.
In the old-style Kingston building where ceiling fans serve as air conditioning, Graham is worlds away from the ultra-mod corporate offices of New Kingston.
"Now I am at home, I'm happy," the social worker told Outlook.
brightest and best
Dr Peta-Anne Baker, head of the Social Work Unit at the University of the West Indies, Mona, and Alva's research supervisor, and later friend and colleague, believes in her.
She cites field work done by Graham in Dominica with the indigenous group, the Caribs. Baker calls it "a fabulous piece of work which she did extremely well", which would lay the foundation for other social workers.
A posting to New York, USA, on a social work internship was also another chance for Graham to shine, despite several obstacles.
"She was one of our brightest and best, very able and very committed," Baker notes.
In fact, so committed was Graham to the career shift, and her passion for helping people, that her thesis, an autoethnography (self-biography) was titled: 'From Management to Social Work: A Caribbean Woman Reconstructs Her Identity at Midlife'.
"Now I realise, it's that I'm really now being trained to do all the things I was doing before - counselling, interventions and, interestingly, social work calls on all the skills and knowledge and experience I have had: teaching, banking/accounts, management."
At WROC's Lyndhurst/Greenwich cluster office, Graham monitors teams who operate a homework centre, drama club for young persons, adult literacy classes, and seniors group. A skills training centre will come on stream at month's end.
special interest
But one project has her special interest.
"Most of the persons in the Women Working for Progress group are over 40, and many of them come to adult learning classes and I try to encourage them that you don't have to be satisfied with where you are at now. You are never to old to learn, and make changes."
Her vision for WROC, now in its rebuilding stages, is to expand the programmes to reach more persons. A workshop held recently with the group on how crime affects them revealed a need for even more help.
"I recognise that women play a very important role in maintaining peace. I want to work with them to help them in developing good parenting skills, developing livelihoods, and eventually economic independence."
She says her faith in God and her family support have been key to her successful career move.
"My husband is very supportive of my work and has always been. His life was reorganised during my period of transition while I was studying, but he understood and I suppose he, too, was a part of my transition process. I thank God for him daily, for he makes life easy for me."
Her daughter Luzan, who recently completed a master's programme in the USA, says her mother is her inspiration.