By Yvonne Chin, Staff Reporter
YOU DON'T get to where you want to go by giving up easily.
That's what Berl Francis, one of the recipients of this year's Public Relations Society of Jamaica Award for Excellence in Public Relations, learnt when she was just a little girl in Craig Head, Manchester.
"If I want to dig down a mountain I must not look at the mountain and say, 'My God, it's too big','" Francis told Flair in a recent interview.
"Instead I think, let me disaggregate this. How can I pull this apart? How can I pull this down? If I pull this down a little bit at a time it might take longer. I'll get help, but it can be done. Once you can think it, you can do it -- that is my philosophy. That is my approach to life," said Francis, one of two people recognised this year for their contribution to public relations. The other is Elaine Commissiong, Cara Ltd.
It's something she learnt from carefully observing ants.
She was wearing a broad smile and her voice dipped as she shared her childhood lesson with Flair. "When I was a little girl, I used to watch ants. I used to watch their behaviour. They have such tenacity," she said.
"I'd put my foot down and see an ant coming and he wouldn't turn back," she added, bowing the upper part of her body and focusing on the ground the way she would have done, back then.
"He'd bite me, try to go over, try to go around but he wouldn't turn back."
Francis was only seven years old when her mother, a dressmaker, and her father, a shoemaker, put her on a country bus named 'Confidence' and sent her to Kingston to attend school and live with her older sister. She added that she felt afraid and alone when her sister got married and sent her to live with strangers. She remembered the lesson from the ants -- you don't give up -- so she continued to pursue her education.
Her mountain was ignorance and she would dig that mountain down by reading.
She recalled, with a smile, reading First Aid in English from cover to cover before even starting Alpha Primary School. By the time she had
settled in, her peers were calling her a walking encyclopaedia.
Her love for knowledge later paid off with a scholarship to Convent of Mercy, (Alpha Academy), where she spent an important part of her life.
Sister Mary Bernadette, who taught at Alpha Academy at the time, still remembers the superb recommendation, which Francis' teacher at Alpha Primary School had sent to Alpha Academy that year.
Having extolled Francis' for her attitude and demeanour, Sister Bernadette has never forgotten the section of the recommendation which said: "Berl excels in English, she treasures books."
"I also treasure books," said Sister Bernadette, "and it was interesting to find a little girl at 11 treasuring books."
Sister Bernadette noted that Francis was a young woman who had excellent intellectual ability. "She was excellent in speech. She was a leader. She was chosen as our head girl and she lived up to all of those qualities we saw in her," said Sister Bernadette, her voice ringing with
satisfaction.
SHE LOVED BOOKS
"Berl was from a humble Jamaican family and I don't think she had any idea about the kind of potential that was hidden in her. It was a pleasure to watch her develop," Sister Bernadette said.
In 1998 Alpha Academy presented the 'Woman of Excellence Award' to Francis and Sister Bernadette had one thing to say about that -- "I think they made a fine choice."
While Sister Bernadette saw Francis' potential and encouraged her to excel, Francis found in Sister, a role model and mentor.
"She was just so...bright." said Francis of Sister Bernadette, her face still glowing with the admiration she felt for her teacher more than 40 years ago.
"I just wanted to be like her."
Wanting to be bright like Sister Bernadette and her unquenchable curiosity kept Berl Francis glued to books. She used the library a lot because she didn't have a lot of money to buy books.
More than 40 years on and Francis is still enthusiastically gleaning knowledge from books. That knowledge has taken her a far way. A warm and eloquent woman with a radiant smile, Francis started her career as a sub-editor at The Gleaner Company in 1965. She subsequently worked as a journalist in Canada and as a public relations practitioner at a number of companies and agencies in the United States and Jamaica.
Among other organisations, she has headed Peter Martin and Associates, an agency responsible for Jamaica's public relations in the United States and Canada in the 1970s. She has also been Public Relations Director at the Urban Development Corporation (UDC) and spent eight years heading Communications Consultants, a public relations company, before starting her own public relations consultancy, Berl Francis and Company Limited, 13 years ago. In addition, Francis teaches PR at home and abroad.
Her work in AIDS communication has earned her two Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) awards for Excellence in Health Communication and she's the recipient of a number of other local and international awards for her work in public relations and she did all that without any formal schooling in PR.
"Public Relations is basically about persuading people to accept an idea," she said.
"That means you have to understand how people think. You have to understand what motivates people and you have to understand how organisations function. I feel passionate about it (public relations). I really love it," she said infusing her office with energy and enthusiasm.
Francis has gained this kind of knowledge primarily from reading widely, observing attentively and listening keenly.
Gale Hall, who worked with her on the HIV/AIDS programme in Jamaica, observed this about Francis who would later become a dear friend: "She's extremely aware of the needs of her clients. She listens very keenly. She reads in between the lines and can articulate what you are saying better than you are saying it. She can translate your needs into action."
Despite amassing a wealth of information and experience, when she turned 40 Francis decided to pursue a Bachelor's (in Sociology) degree and subsequently a Master's in Communication Studies. Prior to that, a solid secondary education at Alpha Academy and a hunger for books coupled with diploma and certificate courses had been the fuel for her success in public relations.
Whenever she's had tough projects -- she just read all she could about the subject, learnt from the Internet and from the people around her.
That's the kind of homework she did after taking on the HIV/AIDS education campaign in 1994. It was the first full-scale campaign on the subject in Jamaica and it really tested her mettle.
People didn't want to talk about it and they
didn't want to hear about it at the time. But Francis (still following the ants she used to watch in her childhood) found a way to get the message across.
By the end of the project she had developed a reputation as a leader in HIV/AIDS communication in Jamaica and the region. "I had to learn so much about how to communicate with people who didn't want to read or change their
behaviour.
"I also learnt that I had to keep on learning because there were so many things that I was doing for the first time. I had to learn to work with my culture. I read a lot about psychology, I just read and read and read because I knew that I had to find unique ways of getting the
information across."
HEARTBREAK
But there's one personal challenge that no amount of reading could prepare Francis for. Last year, after 33 years of marriage Francis, a mother of one, separated from her husband.
"That was not an easy one," she said, with a painful look in her eyes, "I've known my husband from childhood. We grew up on the same road. But it just didn't work."
Still Francis didn't utter a bitter word about this painful episode of her life during her interview. That's typical of her, from what her friends say.
"She's not a gossip and never bad mouths
people. She walks a high road," one of her friends told Flair.
She is still dealing with a tremendous amount of self doubt, coming out of her divorce,
however. "You ask yourself, where did I go wrong? What could I have done better?"
But you look around and you see a lot of other people in the same situation and they manage and you just keep moving. And you pray."
After a brief moment, she shook her head: "God has been very good me."
It's a phrase which Francis repeatedly made in the interview.
"She's a deeply Christian woman and a generous person" said Sister Bernadette. "She has so much going for her and yet nothing goes to her head. I see her being very generous with people who are in difficulty. Sometimes in conversation she says to me, 'Sister, I have to remember where I am coming from.'"
Her 27-year-old son Omar, a musician, said he could recall countless examples of his mother's humility and generosity. "I remember one time when she splashed somebody by mistake and she stopped the car and reversed, apologised to the person, picked him up and took him where he was going. She's just a good person."
Francis explained her generosity this way: "I read somewhere that human beings are like drops of water in a pond. Every single drop makes up the pond. We are all interdependent. We are all connected."
"I think her friends have to sometimes ensure that she puts her self first because she's so quick to help and to be giving," said one friend.
Maria Jones who has known Francis since 1962 remembers telling somebody: "She's the one human being I've known to be consistent. She's a real role model. Whatever I saw in Berl 40 years ago, I still see today."
Still, Francis is always aiming to improve herself personally and professionally. She is a PhD candidate in Communication Studies at the University of the West Indies and intends to focus on HIV/AIDS Communication.
She's still striving for excellence, said her son. "She's still growing and she allows herself to grow and learn from different people."
Francis explained her endless quest for knowledge and excellence by reciting an excerpt from the Lord Alfred Tennyson poem 'Ulysses'.
