This post was originally produced for Forbes.
This is the third in a series of articles from Haiti.
Wilkins Jeangilles was raised in Port-au-Prince by parents who didn’t have the luxury of feeding him every morning before school. That didn’t stop Jeangilles from finishing at the top of his high school class. College, as it is for most Haitians, regardless of their talent and intellect, was virtually out of the question for Jeangilles. Even if he had started, he would likely have been like the majority of Haitians who start at one of the local universities but never graduate. Then along came an organization called HELP.
“With HELP, it was like I was studying in another country with computers, internet, books—everything!”
After graduation, he went to work as the finance officer for Trocaire, an Irish NGO here in the “Republic of NGOs.” About a year later, HELP itself came calling. Having lost their finance director, they asked him to apply for the position. Despite knowing him well, HELP pu…