I am Daphnée Charles, a first time participant in the learner’s voice program of WISE. I am from Port au Prince, Haiti. I just finished three months ago courses for an agro-economics Bachelor degree for which I am writing now a final thesis in Montpellier, France. I went to school in Haiti and actually spent my lifetime there except when, after the January 12th earthquake in Haiti, Dartmouth College, an Ivy League school in the US, invited me as an exchange student, I enjoy that time in Hanover, New Hampshire. I have heard from my parents since my childhood that education was a gold precious key that could open doors and doors. I took this into account and gave to school a favorite place all my life. That was not without success. I got opportunities to learn so many things and my life so far is a success. I believe that education should be accessible to everyone no matter what. That’s the reason why I am actively supporting a non- profit organization called HELP that has distinguished itself by promoting higher education in my country. HELP provides full scholarships to straight B secondary needy students to enter Universities in Haiti. Every year, I take pleasure to go countrywide to specially recruit and encourage young women like me to work hard to beat their odds by entering College to get their diploma. I am an open minded person, friendly and respectful. I like spicy foods, reading and swimming.

I’m Mohammed Al-Jaberi, a young Yemeni person who happened to be luckier than millions of others from the same country. I have had the honor to meet too many people from all around the world with different backgrounds, languages and identities. I finished my secondary school in Yemen. However, I spent one of my secondary school years in the United States as an exchange student. I lived in many multi-religious backgrounds; historically, I come from a part of Yemen where Yemenite Jews lived, I’m a Muslim and I lived with a conservative Christian family for a year. All of these opportunities have participated somehow in forming a liberal and tolerant person who believes in diversity, culture dialogs and internationalism. My beginnings as an activist were three years ago when I started volunteering in various activities to help my community in different fields concentrating on youth empowerment, feminism and children education. I did six months internship as a program assistant for an educational program called English Micro-scholarship program ACCESS in AMIDEAST – Yemen.  I love to listen to classical music especially for Beethoven and Mozart. I like reading oriental novels and books that were written by Eastern authors who live in the west; they just have an amazing flavor of seeing the world from two different cultural views. I’m moving to Paris in a matter of days to start my undergraduate degree in engineering.

As it clearly appears Daphnée and I have some specific similarities. This has probably brought us to pair up for WISE this year. We are both excited about meeting soon in Doha and we hope to fully enjoy this great initiative and share as much as we can through our blog posts.