Building New Futures for Young Haitians

To help motivated high schoolers in his nation build the knowledge and skills they need to access higher education abroad, the Hector Foundation, created by Wilhem Hector (Haiti, UWC Red Cross Nordic, MIT ’25), runs the intensive, three-week online Program for the Advancement of Young Scholars (PAYS).

Modeled in part after pre-college summer programs at some U S universities, PAYS exposes students to a range of subjects the Haitian curriculum doesn’t offer, plus workshops on academic writing, public speaking, democracy, and other subjects “that can be useful to them as they become citizens of the world,” Wilhem says.

Begun in 2020, and managed by Wilhem and two fellow UWC alums, PAYS is taught by Haitian professionals in the country and abroad Forty students participated last summer, and Wilhem hopes to double that in 2024.

“Our summer program is often their only opportunity to learn about going to college in the U.S., and how they can best make themselves competitive candidates,” Wilhem writes. “Thirty-five percent of our students the past four years have received scholarships to pursue their studies in the U.S., Canada, and Germany.”

Wilhem also led the development of Project Manus, an open-use maker space that opened last summer as the first resource of its kind in Haiti. The project has trained a team of engineering students at Haitian universities to lead its weekend workshops and has been building partnerships with schools in Port-au-Prince.

“The ultimate goal of Project Manus is to establish the grounds of hands-on science within the Haitian national curriculum,” Wilhem writes. “We aim to train hundreds of kids yearly.”

This profile is part of the “Undergraduates in Action” series from the 2024 Annual Report.