Following the devastating earthquake in January 2010, Plan suspended its sponsorship activity in Haiti in order to concentrate resources on recovery work. From July 2011, Plan Haiti’s sponsorship team resumed its regular activities and started enrolling hundreds of new girls and boys into the programme.
When sponsorship activities restarted for nearly 10,000 sponsored children in the West Department, one of the most excited among them was Pauline, who lives in a community not far from Croix-des-Bouquets.
Pauline, whose father died before she ever got to know him, has been a sponsored child through Plan since first grade. Now in sixth grade and living with her mother, her three brothers, and four sisters, she is not shy about crediting her sponsor for her scholarly success.
“Now, I am able to read and write. I owe what I am today to my sponsor and I am so grateful.”
Knowing that she has a sponsor to whom she can write letters motivates Pauline to study harder in school. She can’t wait to write her new letter now that she knows Plan will be sending them again to her sponsor.
“I will tell my sponsor that I have passed my exams, because I studied well, and that I will continue on this path so that I can realize my dreams,” she says.
And thanks to Plan’s work and the encouragement it brings, Pauline is dreaming big.
"In seven years I will finish with secondary school. Then I dream of becoming a famous doctor so that I can take care of not only my brothers and sisters, but also all the people who need health care in my country, which was struck so hard by the cholera epidemic. That’s the reason why I work so hard at school in order to reach my goal,” says Pauline.