HELP Testimonial: Anne Martine AUGUSTIN
My name is Anne Martine Augustin and I am 23. I was born and raised in Cap-Haitien, a beautiful town in Northern Haiti. I spent the 17 first year of my life there. I have a big sister, a little sister and a little brother. My mother was a merchant. She traveled to Port-au-Prince to buy boxes of used shoes and sold them back in Cap-Haitien. My father was a driver but he was the kind of man who is not involved in the daily life of his children. My mother had the entire family’s economy on her shoulders.
I had a childhood marked by a mother who sacrificed her entire life to provide a quality education to her children. My mother incited a passion for education in us. She always told us that the only way we can have a better life is to be well educated and she wanted us to occupy high positions in our professional life; as she would say, become “important people” Over time her dream became mine. I devoted myself entirely to my studies and consequently got good grades. I was proud to bring my grades home and make my mom happy. Her satisfaction was stimulation for me.
Things got complicated when my mother died suddenly when I was 16. One year later, my father died too. My world fell apart. I wasn’t prepared to live without my parents. My aunts and uncle took charge of us but it was difficult to fill the emptiness my parents left. I dived deeper into my books to survive.
Two years after my mother died, I graduated from high school. I was faced of the difficult reality of what comes next. I was prepared to make any sacrifice to go to university but had no way to make that happen. Luckily my principal encouraged me to apply to HELP. It is one of the best things that could happen to me. I am still a good student but I am also a citizen, aware of her leadership. I realized that I can contribute to make a change. HELP provides me an environment where I can develop my full potential. More than university fees, books, English and computer classes, housing, stipend and advice, at HELP I found new objectives, new sources of inspiration.
Five years ago, I was a young adolescent full of hopes. Today I still have big hopes but I also have accomplishments. In June I won a programming competition sponsored by the World Bank and the government Office of Risk and Disaster Management and they asked me to further develop a national information system that will better gather information nationwide on risks and disasters. With my degree, I can dream bigger. I am proud to be one of the Haitian woman engineers but I am even prouder to be a co-founder of the student group ACTIVEH, which organizes internships for university students in Haiti and promotes youth involvement in their community. I want to share with other Haitians what I have received from HELP. I want to raise their civic engagement and contribute to get more and more people engaged in the development of Haiti. HELP has given me the opportunity to make my community proud and to make my mother proud. Thank you.