By Lois Barrett, ContributorNEW YORK (AP):
SHE GREW up in a rural Jamaican town where her parents owned a country store. Now, Yvonne Graham helps administer an urban borough of 2.5 million people.
As Brooklyn's deputy borough president, she oversees health and human services and education for the borough, one of five in New York City.
She is the first Caribbean-born leader to hold the office and is also one of a growing number of people from the region holding prominent positions in New York City government.
Graham said she still draws on lessons learned in the northeastern Jamaican town of Bensonton, where her parents owned a small shop and would donate school notebooks and pencils to children who couldn't afford them.
"I thought it was a natural part of life -- serving your community, something that everyone did," Graham said.
A nurse trained in Jamaica, Graham moved to the United States in 1979 and settled in Brooklyn.
She first worked as an emergency room nurse at Brooklyn's Brookdale Hospital. In 1982, she founded the Caribbean Women's Health Association, a non-profit group initially staffed by volunteers and dedicated to improving health care for Caribbean immigrants.
When she took on her current job in January 2002, she left behind a non-profit group with one medical clinic and four other centres staffed by social workers, health educators, immigration lawyers and others. The Caribbean Women's Health Association has some 50 employees and an annual budget of nearly $4 million.
Now Graham is working with New York University's social work department to set up a programme to train social workers to deal with Caribbean immigrants. People from the region sometimes shy away from seeking health care due to language barriers or worries about lacking insurance or the money to pay.
Caribbean populations also have disproportionately high levels of HIV infection and infant mortality, experts say.
Graham, the eldest of nine children, said she learned the importance of serving others when she was young. Her father Charles Richards, an employee at the bauxite company Reynolds Jamaica Mines, was a community leader in his rural district and often contacted the government to request the paving of roads or other assistance.
Her parents stressed the value of education and never allowed her to skip school.
"It was the typical Caribbean experience," Graham said. "As students we were working hard and shooting for the stars, without even knowing what was out there."
Graham's father died in a car accident when she was 11. Her mother, 79-year-old Lucy Richards, still lives in the same town in the rural parish of St. Ann.
Graham studied nursing at the University of the West Indies and then worked as a flight attendant for Air Jamaica. She immigrated to New York with her husband, a young Jamaican who had been raised in Brooklyn. They later divorced.
She continued her education in New York. Graham holds a Bachelor's degree in community health and health administration from St. Joseph's College, a Master's degree in public health from Hunter College and a certificate in business administration from Columbia University's Graduate School of Business.
Last year, in a tribute to her homeland, she helped host an event at Brooklyn's Borough Hall for Jamaica's 40th anniversary of independence from Britain.
At a town hall meeting in Brooklyn organised by Air Jamaica in December, Graham spoke on the need for more Caribbean immigrants to participate in US politics by applying for citizenship and voting.
"If you don't have voting power, people don't take you seriously," she said later. "It's important to hold people in office accountable."
