From poverty to prosperity through higher education

HELP's merit and needs-based university scholarships and comprehensive leadership training produces hundreds of highly trained young leaders from the disadvantaged class, who remain in their country to provide much-needed skilled professional labor, permanently reverse the cycle of poverty for their families and expand opportunity for other disadvantaged youth.

In the globalized post-industrial economy, quality post-secondary education provides the greatest guarantee of productivity and prosperity, for individuals and nations. In developing countries however, the poor face high barriers to entry, including few rural universities and little financial assistance. Disadvantaged students who manage to enroll are unlikely to graduate given the economic hardships and the lack of advising and other support services. Upon graduation poor students lack family and social networks helpful for employment. These obstacles, from application through graduation, leave millions of talented youth undereducated, perpetuating inequality and economic stagnation on a nationwide scale. 

HELP has a 20 year track record, turning hundreds of deeply disadvantaged students into productive and prosperous professionals. 70% of applicants’ families earn less than $2/day, yet HELP graduates’ have a 95% employment rate at an average salary exceeding $15,000.  3% of HELP graduates have left Haiti, compared to a historic rate of 84%.

A 2017 independent evaluation found that HELP “offered a range of services unique in the world”…”leading to a real transformation in students to become active citizens committed to change within themselves, their community, and their country.”

Given Haiti’s indicators, this model will work anywhere.  

Thousands of high performing youth from disadvantaged families will enter university and receive supplemental training from HELP in IT, English and Leadership. Graduation rate and employment rate will be 50% greater than the national average. Graduates will remain in country at five times the historic rate and expand opportunity for other youth.

Apart from scholarship students, beneficiaries include the siblings they sponsor at university, thousands of youth benefiting from student service projects, those benefiting from graduates’ civic engagement and the state through increased tax revenues.

HELP provides tuition for university and directly service provision for all other services. 

enrollment information - 1,000 first generation university students enroll

Internal data Vs annual control group survey. - Graduation rate and salaries are 50% higher than control group of failed candidates

Annual survey of graduates Vs control group. - Graduates will engage in civic service at higher rates than the control group, including taking leadership positions.

Independent evaluators have determined that the HELP model is “highly effective” and “unique in the world.” HELP’s custom built, open source student database, BazLa, is an essential component of this success, tracking students from application through graduation and beyond. Standardizing and centralizing scores of data points for each student allows HELP to address individual issues quickly to reduce attrition. Analyzing that data also allows us to identify institutional strengths and weaknesses. As BazLa is only three years old, it can only become more useful with time.  

As a student database, BazLa is necessarily human centered, serving high performing students from highly disadvantaged backgrounds and solving real problems for real people. The information entered into BazLa and the reports generated serve only to improve the efficiency and quality of service HELP provides our students. Furthermore, while expertise in open source development is not common in Haiti, the U.S. based developers are training HELP IT staff to be able to fully operate and modify the database, thereby building local open source expertise. For obvious reasons, open source software is particularly suited to developing countries. 

HELP envisions partnering with local groups interested in replicating HELP's model in the poorest Latin American countries. HELP will share the BazLa technology as part of the training and implementation of the HELP model in new countries. Students would receive the benefits of the technology, along with the other goods and services, free of charge. Initial funding would be provided by donors. Graduates are required to make income-contingent contributions to the sponsoring institution, ensuring that disadvantaged students fully benefit from the technology and other services and also use the fruits of the training to fund future cohorts.  

HELP has grown steadily, funded largely through grants and donations.  We recently instituted a sustainable financing mechanism via alumni contributions. Due to the high rates of graduation and employment, and graduates’ high salaries, we now require employed graduates to make income-contingent contributions to HELP for a fixed period. This creates a sustainable source of income that should only grow with time as more students graduate and graduates’ incomes increase.  Other potential sources of income include charging employers placement fees for HELP graduates, following the employment agency model. 

The HELP model, tested and refined, has met with remarkable and consistent success in a turbulent and unstable environment. We have scaled from a single beneficiary to hundreds of direct and thousands of indirect beneficiaries, without sacrificing quality of services or results. With the aid of BazLa we are now poised to scale to thousands of direct beneficiaries and tens of thousands of indirect ones. The limiting factor to increased scale in Haiti is funding. The major limiting factor to international expansion is the identification of appropriate local partners in target countries. 

https://uhelp.net/

https://www.facebook.com/HaitianEducationLeadershipProgram/

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/opinion/sunday/nicholas-kristof-the-gift-of-education.html

The HELP model has met with remarkable success and proved beyond a doubt that it is an effective way to reduce poverty on an individual and family scale, while providing developing countries with highly skilled professionals that are often lacking, and engaged citizens working for change. The potential impact of the HELP model at scale, the creation of a modern, progressive leadership class, who come from disadvantaged backgrounds, is one of the most powerful forces for change in the post-colonial world.  Solve’s mission of scaling success is exactly what HELP needs at this time. 

HELP's current partners include major universities in Haiti, the Kellogg Foundation, the U.S. State Department and numerous private foundations as well as OpenFlows Community Technology Lab. 

Because the HELP model is so unique, we see no natural competitors at this time.