Up Close Michel Pierre…Volunteer, youth worker, projects manager and footballer |16 September 2014

‘It depends on oneself to get out of bad habits’


Nowadays it is very rare to see people who will work or help out without thinking of getting something in return. Talking about potential candidates to feature in this week’s ‘Up Close’ column one of my colleagues suggested Michel Pierre.

When I heard of the things he does and his interests I was a bit reluctant to contact him. As we have a good working relationship in the office my colleague gladly made contact with him for me and set up the interview.

As I walked into Michel’s office I was thinking how the interview would go on. He welcomed me with a smile and with jokes which made me feel at ease to talk to him.

Michel is the youngest in a family of six children. He started going to school at the parish crèche at Cascade – the district where he grew up. And he continued his school years at the Cascade school.

“As a child I was so shy and scared of making mistakes and this was my worst weakness. I would often keep quiet in class even though I knew the answers to questions asked by the teachers. As a result, I became an average learner and even disliked school,” Michel explained.

“On the other hand, I fell in love with sports activities and was very good at playing football, volleyball and doing athletics. During my primary and early secondary school days I tried my best to cope with my studies and slowly but surely I got there,” he added.

Thinking of his days as a schoolboy Michel said: “As a schoolboy I was always lazy to go to school and was often late. After school hours I was the last one to reach home as I was constantly playing around with friends. After I was disciplined by my parents when I was in secondary four I made a promise to myself to take my studies more seriously.”

In 1997, Michel went to the National Youth Service (NYS) to continue his studies and was selected to sit for two O-Levels. After good performances in his exams he was admitted to the School of Foundation Studies within the Seychelles Polytechnic the following year (1998).

“Reaching the Polytechnic was great as I had achieved my objective and my parents were pleased with me. I was aiming for Business Studies the following year but I had to wait for my results from the University of Cambridge. As waiting is not one of my best qualities, so before the results were out I went to look for possible employment and started experiencing life in a different way,” Michel explained.

Michel started his first job at the Seychelles Trading Company (STC) – formerly Seychelles Marketing Board (SMB) – in the meat section as a cold store worker in early 1999 and spent one year working for the company.

In 2000 he joined the Public Utilities Corporation (PUC) as an engine room operator in the production section. He was given on-the-job training which he found to be very interesting.

“During the first three months I made a lot of sacrifice to quickly learn as much as possible about the job. My aim was to improve my skills and abilities and as a keen learner I quickly got promotion to become the control room operator. I was assigned to record daily data, liaise with other personnel to take appropriate actions in case of abnormalities and help supervisors in decision-making and delegating responsibilities to other operators,” he said.

“My leadership and communication skills helped and they surely developed to reach a higher level. I also developed organisational and supervisory skills. The supervisors motivated me and at the end of each working year my performance was greatly rated. As a result I was given extra responsibilities and I was responsible to train new recruits. I also went to the Praslin power station to run a supervisory training for three weeks,” he added.

During his spare time Michel was involved in community work in his district. He was a member of the Youth Action Team committee with the responsibility of organising different activities for the youth at district and regional levels.

This is how he got interested in youth work and after four years working with the Public Utilities Corporation, he applied for a youth officer post within the Department of Youth which was advertised in the Seychelles Nation newspaper and was successful.

“I went through several counseling sessions with several supervisors and managers from the PUC but my mind was made up and I was looking forward to the new challenge,” Michel said with determination in his voice.  

“With the objective of helping out the youth I worked hard and being a youth worker for five years I did my best to empower the youth of Cascade and Seychelles in general. I have acquired and developed different skills such as leadership, competency, organisation, communication, self-empowerment and many more,” he said.

He resigned as a youth officer with the youth department and took up another challenge at the Jj Spirit Foundation as events coordinator.
Michel was the producer of the first ‘Sesel I annan talan’ singing contest.

Four years ago, Michel resigned from his post at the Foundation and started to work with the Liaison Unit Of Non-Governmental Organisations of Seychelles (Lungos) as projects manager, focusing on capacity building of NGOs to effectively implement projects. He also became increasingly involved in advocacy, policy issues and resource mobilisation.  

“As the projects manager I coordinate, monitor and evaluate the bulk of national projects that empower and build the capacity of NGOs in Seychelles to contribute towards the development of the country. I am highly involved in my community and in national volunteerism initiatives,” Michel explained.

Michel is the founding member of the Compassion Foundation – a youth non-governmental organisation tackling different social ills affecting the community. He has voluntarily worked in various national community youth projects across Seychelles and has taken part in regional social and health programmes in Madagascar and Mauritius. He has a keen interest in democracy and as a trained election observer he has taken part in two international election observation missions in Zimbabwe and Madagascar in 2013.

He holds a diploma in youth development from the University of South Africa (Unisa), and is currently completing another diploma in general management at the University of Seychelles.

Michel also used to play football with the Pointe Larue-based St John Bosco team and was the top scorer. Then he transferred to his district team, The Lions FC, with whom he was the best marksman.

During his days with The Lions FC they won promotion over three successful years, winning the Central League trophy in 2004, third division title in 2005, and finished as second division runners-up in 2006. He also scored the winning goal in the playoff match against Survivors from Praslin to take The Lions to the first division.

“I miss my favourite sport football. The days I played football was the best time of my life,” Michel said.

Michel is also the chairperson of the Parent-Teacher Association of the La Rosière primary school and as a former youth worker he gets to talk to young people who are doing drugs and he encourages them to refrain from doing it.

 “It depends on oneself completely to get out of bad habits. One must accept that he or she has a problem to be able to overcome the weakness. I also believe that the society needs to do more to help the troubled youth,” he said.

By B.P Damou