- Student; On Campus
Shultz D'Meza, a 23-year-old M.B.A. student from Haiti, was just months away from receiving his bachelor's degree in economics at Haiti State University when the 2010 earthquake struck.
"Everything I was working towards disappeared. My school collapsed. I lost my job and my house," he says. "My hope fell down."
Shultz describes the month that followed as the hardest of his life.
"Sometimes I was crying because my mom just has my little sister and me. And I don’t know how I can take care of them," he says.
While wandering from town to town in search of translation work, Shultz stopped at an impromptu medical clinic, where he was treated for malaria. There he met Annette Tuttle '84 and '87, a volunteer missionary from New Hampshire who earned her bachelor's degree in business administration and her master’s degree in social science at SNHU. Shultz spent the entire day translating Annette’s prayers into Creole.
When Annette returned to the United States, she could not keep stop thinking about Shultz. She scheduled a meeting with SNHU President Paul LeBlanc and asked if the school might sponsor Shultz for a semester so he could finally earn his bachelor's degree. Instead, the president offered Shultz a $26,000 scholarship, which Shultz is using to pursue a lifelong dream – his M.B.A.
Today Shultz lives in downtown Manchester and attends classes at SNHU full-time.
"I am here to learn, so that I can be stronger when I get back," he says. "I want to be a real agent of change in Haiti."
