Every term she spent at The MILL Academy, somebody else paid her school fees. This year she gave something back, and a national award followed.
Kisma Panthier-Jn Pierre doesn’t really talk about The MILL Academy as a business, even though she runs it like one. She talks about the Children. Specifically the ones who were clever enough, and keen enough, but whose families couldn’t find the fees.
Kisma grew up with a dream that seemed bigger than her circumstances: one day, she wanted to build a school. Her childhood taught her what it meant to long for opportunities that were not easily within reach. With determination, she kept working towards that dream. She’s never forgotten what that felt like, and it’s the reason the school in Law Pasture, St. John’s, Antigua and Barbuda has always kept some places aside for children on bursaries.
One of those children graduated Grade 6 this year. She’d been on a bursary from the day she arrived until the day she left, and somebody had covered her fees every term in between.
A few weeks after graduating, Jaida won the CIBC Caribbean Young Volunteer Award, which goes to a Grade 6 graduate who gives back to their community.
Kisma is careful not to take too much credit. The school never told the girl to go and volunteer. She just did it. “If the school gave her anything”, Kisma says, “it was the sense that she belonged there as much as anyone else”. She seems to have taken that and given it straight back out.
Talent is rarely what separates the children who thrive from the ones who drift. Belief and school fees usually are.
After nearly twenty years in classrooms, that’s Kisma’s fairly blunt view. Belief is the part a school can give. The fees are the bit she needs help with.
There are other children waiting for a place right now.
| HOW YOU CAN HELP
Sponsor a child’s full tuition, pay part of it, or give a small amount each month. All of it goes into keeping a child in school. Call +1 268 773 8161 Email info@themillacademy.com Donate millfoundationinc.com |
One bursary helped one girl through school. She’s already paying it forward.
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