SANTA CRUZ, St Elizabeth — Fitz Rowe’s earliest and most pleasant memories are of co-operative endeavour.

His face lights up as he tells how his parents and their neighbours use to “beat rice” together at nights back in Westmoreland more than half-a-century ago.

The rice having been reaped, the next task was to separate the grain from the stalk by “beating” it with sticks before it could be dried and sent to the mill.

A potentially tedious, time-consuming task became a festival as neighbours came together to lighten work and simultaneously enjoy themselves.

Rowe remembers the time-honoured custom — originating in India — of using cow dung to build a “sort of concrete base” that would remain rock solid for weeks. On that base, referred to by locals as a ‘carryon’ or ‘barbecue’, the rice farmers and their families used sticks to beat the rice until all was separated from the stalk. Over a period of several nights all the rice produced in the community would be “beaten” and separated from the stalk by the entire community working together.

“It was a happy time for children because you get to run around and play and there is a lot of food… on those nights children don’t go to bed because there is rice and curry being cooked,” said Rowe.

But even as he enjoyed himself the young boy learnt the value of co-operative and community action.

“It was a work activity, a co-operative activity, right before my house… showing that with co-operation people can get through and get things done, it was a valuable lesson that stayed with me,” Rowe told the Jamaica Observer Central.

No wonder then that after more than a decade of work in the sugar industry, bauxite and even in the schoolroom as a pre-trained teacher, Rowe, a graduate of St Elizabeth Technical High School (STETHS), found his home in co-operatives.

Today he is the face of the credit union movement in St Elizabeth. He took over management of a tottering St Elizabeth Co-op Credit Union in 1981. Back then he had three staff members, a listed membership of about 1,000 people and a loan delinquency rate of 90 per cent.

Thirty-one years later, the credit union piloted by Rowe through ‘stormy waters’ stirred by the wider economy — including a major financial meltdown, global recession, collapse of bauxite/alumina in St Elizabeth, and downsizing of the sugar industry — is among Jamaica’s impressive success stories.

The St Elizabeth Co-op Credit Union now has a staff complement of 60 with headquarters in a two-storey building at Beadle’s Plaza in Santa Cruz and branches in Black River, Appleton, Junction, and Nain.

The credit union membership now numbers 34,000 with another “six or seven thousand” minor accounts, assets are worth $1.3 billion, and there is a loan portfolio of $1 billion.

But while the credit union has “grown tremendously” Rowe says he is most pleased that the 40-year-old organisation has been able to make a major impact improving people’s lives and on development in St Elizabeth.

“What is important for us is not the net numbers but the contribution we have made to parish development, providing loans to our members for businesses, housing, education, and for just stabilising and maintaining a reasonable life in the parish through, for example, providing loans to farmers,” said Rowe.

Now at 61, Rowe says another source of delight is the knowledge that he can walk away knowing that the business and management structures at the credit union will ensure smooth continuity.

“The structures are in place for succession,” said Rowe. “If I am not here people don’t even miss me again,” he added with a chuckle.

Not that Rowe — who is a farmer on the side — has any plans to leave the co-op movement. He says, his retirement plans include “looking to more co-operative development… I am looking at community development using the co-operative business model”.

He struggles to understand why successive governments haven’t bought into the concept that the co-operative movement provides the ideal avenue for building communities and ultimately the nation. The idea, he points out, is not new, since National Hero Norman Manley had taken that road in quest of a modern Jamaica decades ago.

“When Norman Manley came up with the idea of starting co-ops in Jamaica in the ’30s it was because he recognised that the co-operative model was the best approach to bring quick development to Jamaica during those hard times. That brought about the number of fishing co-ops around Jamaica, brought about the cocoa and coffee co-operatives…,” said Rowe.

“Norman used the co-operative model to bring about community development in Jamaica. He sent a number of men who used to work with the Government to Europe to go and study the co-op system and come back to Jamaica to implement it,” he recalled.

“What they really started was study clubs. It was just an idea to bring about development, getting people together, sitting down on a verandah and discussing it and from there to the establishment of a steering committee, establish rules, start to put resources together and from there they formed excellent organisations which are the backbone of many of our communities today,” said Rowe.

He identifies the co-op model as one which could be used to fast-forward the development of food processing factories all across rural Jamaica. This value-added ingredient, he insists, is critical for genuine rural development and to help Jamaican farmers reap the benefit of their hard work and sacrifice.

Born in Grange HilI, Westmoreland on February 11, 1951, Fitz Gerald George Rowe is the last of six children for Frome Estate worker Ernest Rowe and his wife Daisy. In addition to his job at Frome, Ernest Rowe and his wife farmed rice and sugar cane.

Fitz Rowe attended school in Savanna-la-Mar: at the primary school in that seaside town and also at what is now known as Godfrey Stewart High, then referred to as Senior School.

He moved on to STETHS in his very early teens after success in what was then the Technical Entrance exam, starting a relationship with St Elizabeth that would become lifelong.

Rowe claims STETHS helped to shape his life for the better and to develop a sense of responsibility and an appreciation of hard work. “It was a place that moulded you for leadership,” said Rowe.

He found role models among his teachers and school administrators, including the soft-spoken, gentlemanly but highly authoritative school principal Jasper Wray, vice-principal John Pottinger, and English language specialist Rupert Linton.

Rowe gained the respect of his teachers and fellow students to the extent that he became a prefect and did well enough academically to be consistently in the “top ten” of his class.

He also learnt to stand up for what he perceived to be right. He and others among the student leadership, including head boy, former Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett, were part of a protest against what they perceived as gross injustice perpetrated by a teacher and the failure of the administration to take appropriate action.

On Rowe’s initiative, all the prefects turned in their badges and as the fallout continued, the student leadership refused to do a year book. “Look back at the history of STETHS and you won’t find a year book for 1969, that was our statement of protest,” said Rowe.

He had done well enough at school for his teachers to categorise him “university material”. But while pleased, his parents made it clear there was no money to support such a venture. He would have to join the working world.

The end of the 1960s to early ’70s was a period of rapid growth for Jamaica and Rowe found work relatively easy to come by.

As the fast-growing and attractively salaried bauxite sector drew skilled labour from elsewhere, opportunities opened up in the sugar industry and Rowe landed a job as a bookkeeper at Frome Estate.

It was an achievement virtually unheard of. Previously, 10-year experience as a clerk was seen as required credential for a bookkeeping job. Also, his colour was all wrong since, as Rowe points out, “managers in the system before were mostly brown people”. To top it all, Rowe found that as part of his duty he had to ride a horse around the estate.

Rowe enjoyed the experience “of working closely with ordinary people” and stayed at Frome for two or three years before moving on to Duckenfield in St Thomas in 1972.

But he felt “stifled” in St Thomas and didn’t stay long.

He came back to St Elizabeth and worked as a teacher at Black River High and Newell High before joining the ‘bauxite rush” by securing a job at the Revere plant in Maggotty, northern St Elizabeth. But by 1974, that plant closed, victim of low-grade ore and the gathering energy crisis of the 1970s.

He moved on to the accounts department of the St Elizabeth Sugar Company to find major “challenges”. As Rowe remembers it, bills couldn’t be paid “because people couldn’t find the relevant documents”. It took time, but Rowe gradually overhauled the accounting system and in addition to that developed an arrangement with suppliers to cope with cash flow issues.

It was at the Sugar Company that Rowe’s relationship with the St Elizabeth Co-op, which had been started by Santa Cruz businessmen, first began.

“St Elizabeth Sugar Company was one of the biggest contributors to the credit union, so we had a director on the board and he came to me one day and said he was sort of fed up with being on the board. He felt that because of my own attitude (to solving problems) maybe I could help…,” Rowe recalled.

Rowe went to two meetings of the board and was soon drafted as assistant treasurer. Such were the problems at the credit union, Rowe found himself visiting to “help out”.

As time passed, the future of sugar became increasingly uncertain and the pressure from those around him to take on the job of managing the credit union increased. In 1981, Rowe finally went to the credit union president Dr Ian Vincent and said “if you guys interested I can give it a shot…”

Rowe started as manager and has remained in the position to this day, broken only by relatively short stints at universities abroad. His first task was to halt a run on the institution.

“There was a lot of uncertainty and people wanted their money,” recalled Rowe. Most of the members were from the troubled Holland Sugar Estate and Rowe sought to ease minds and at the same time educate.

“For about a month I sat down with people and tried to educate them. I said ‘yu can’t just draw yu money like that, you have to save and encourage others to join and save…” Gradually, the fears eased and Rowe moved to stabilise and build.

He dealt with the huge problem of delinquency by drafting many of the delinquents into leadership positions within the credit union. “I said to them, ‘instead of being delinquent, you need to come and build the credit union’, so I would identify someone and draft them on to the credit committee… I took people who were delinquent and made them leaders and we were able to turn the credit union around…,” he said.

A key part of the strategy was to develop a planning ethic. Helped by a small grant from the credit union league, the credit union’s first strategic planning retreat was held at Trelawny Beach Hotel in 1985. Since then, such a meeting stretched over two days involving the directors, committee members, management staff and high achieving staff members has been held every year — a pivotal event on the organisation’s calendar.

“We examine our goal, action plan for the previous year and develop new objectives for another year but also, always we have a five-year plan on the table…,” explained Rowe.

On the back of that strong planning ethic the St Elizabeth Co-op embraced the Alpart Co-op after the bauxite crash of the 1980s and also the Appleton Sugar Estate Co-op, becoming the fastest-growing co-operative in the land.

It was in line with Rowe’s own philosophy that very small credit unions in the same geographical area were better off merging.

“It was my view that the best way to approach development in the parish is not to have three, but one credit union,” said Rowe.

He says planning has helped to protect the credit union from shocks such as the global recession, which began in 2008, and the collapse of bauxite/alumina in 2009.

“We recognised that there is a risk in confining ourselves to any special group such as alumina or sugar. We recognise we shouldn’t just get members who were at the factory but also the people in the community — the shopkeeper, the doctor, the nurse. So we are building a base much stronger and wider than the estate…” he said.

Also, the St Elizabeth Co-op has retained the trust of Jamaicans abroad.

“They send their remittances (and) they borrow money to build their houses… so even though we (credit unions) are not allowed to carry out foreign exchange activities, we bring in foreign exchange. …We are helping to provide well-needed foreign exchange to the country… most people don’t pay that any attention but that’s a critical thing,” said Rowe.