FROM HOMELESS, BAREFOOTED IN JA TO TOP ENGINEER in UK & USA: Poor St Mary, JAMAICA boy, Robin Richards, realises his dream....Richards has successfully managed multimillion-dollar/pound rail engineering construction and infrastructure projects

BY INGRID BROWN Associate Editor -- Special Assignment browni@jamaicaobserver.com  Sunday, September 06, 2015    

ROBIN Richards could easily have believed the naysayers that he would amount to nothing, since the circumstances under which he grew up seemingly lent credence to this prediction.

RICHARDS... for one year straight all we used to eat is either
 turn cornmeal or cornmeal porridge for breakfast, lunch and dinner

But the 38-year-old has beaten all odds to rise from a life of attending school barefooted and living on the streets in Jamaica to excelling in his field of civil engineering in both the United Kingdom and the United States where he now lives. An experienced, certified and accomplished project director with over 14 years' proven track record Richards has successfully managed multimillion-dollar/pound rail engineering construction and infrastructure projects through all phases of his development.

A guest lecturer in construction management and safety at two universities in the US, Richards holds a master's degree in business administration and project management from Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge and is now working on completing his doctoral studies at Walden University in the US.

"I always had it in the back of my head that I wanted to be different. I wanted to break the mould in the family, where there was this spiralling effect of things not working out, and I knew that education was the way out because I didn't see any other way," Richards said.

Richards, who worked as Operation Track and Structure - Project Director at London Underground before taking up a job as Track and Structure - Compliance & Safety Manager at Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, grew up in Heywood Hall, St Mary.

At age three his mother moved out of the home leaving him and his two older brothers to be raised by their father.

With his father struggling to make ends meet from odd jobs on various farms in the parish, Richards and his siblings had to help in the fields and around the house from an early age. His father's financial woes were made even worse by a court order forcing him to compensate the owner of some goats he killed because they were damaging his farm.

According to Richards, his father "spent his life" using most of what he earned to pay back for the animals.

So rough was it for the family that Richards recalled that oftentimes the family's only meal for the day consisted of turn cornmeal or cornmeal porridge.

"We had nothing. For one year straight all we used to eat is either turn cornmeal or cornmeal porridge for breakfast, lunch and dinner," he recalled.

Not only was it rough not having enough to eat, but Richards, who was formerly known as Foster, said he was treated differently by the man he knew then as his father.

"He knew that I wasn't his biological child, but I didn't know, and that was why he and my brothers would treat me differently," he said.

From age nine Richards said he had to work alongside his father and brothers in the field and this meant he was often absent from school. more