Booker T. Washington once said “I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has had to overcome while trying to succeed”.
I would like to thank God first and foremost for granting me the opportunity to be amongst you all today. I would also like to thank my incessantly supportive family, my friends and you all for being here. But very importantly, I would like to thank School on Wheels for supporting my family for so long and for recognizing me as their first college graduate from the High School Plus Program.
We have all achieved a form of success in our lives; whether it is with our careers, our families, and our health or maybe with our inner lives. Many of us, if not all have had a taste of success of some sort and a number of us are still working towards achieving a particular form of it. It is really interesting to see how we work so hard towards our goals, towards achieving success, towards our accomplishments; however when we do achieve that very goal that we thought would define our strength and character, we realize that it is not the very accomplishment that is deserving of the credit for the strength that we have acquired or the person that we have become, but it is the journey that we traveled.
Each and every one of us have traveled a particular journey, each unique in a way but each equally contributive in defining our character and the person that we are today. Today, I am here to tell you all a bit about my ongoing journey and how it has contributed to making me into the person speaking to you all today.
My family and I encountered School on Wheels about four years ago while residing at the Conway House, in Middleboro. For those of you who don’t know, the Conway House is a homeless shelter located in Middleboro Massachusetts. We were transferred to the house after spending several months at Super 8 motels both in Brockton and Fall River. It was during the fall of 2010, my senior year of High School. My family and I had reached a financial level where we could no longer provide for ourselves. See for most, it would have been a time of great sadness, anger, or even depression; however the foundation on which our family was built enabled us to face those days with faith, perseverance, hope and happiness. We recognized that the wall that we had just hit was only of a financial nature; our faith and our belief in our God remained untouched. For one, our family had just been reunited. My two older sisters, Milca and Nephthalie had just joined us from Haiti on a very short notice.
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I met former School on Wheels coordinator, Emily Ring along with some other volunteer tutors one afternoon at the Conway House. We shared our story and our dreams with them. From that day, School on Wheels made it a goal of theirs to see us achieve our dreams. They provided me with help and support from day one. From assisting me with completing my college applications, to my FAFSA, to buying books every semester and assisting with my extra fees and balances, they made sure that I have every resource necessary in order for me to succeed in my college career.
Well, here I am, four years later, about to graduate from college with a degree in Mathematics and minors in Economics and Accounting. It has been a challenging four years, I have faced difficulties along the way but through it all, I have not lost sight of my dreams and where I want to be, I have not forgotten all of the investments and sacrifices made by my parents. Those thoughts fueled my motivation every day. I am happy to receive to be honored as the first School on Wheels College graduate today. I am happy to show other young people who at some point in their lives were affected by homelessness that there is a life and success beyond their trials.