"Service Is Not Something You Do When Life Is Easy"

For Dawoodly Dennis, a fourth-year law student and Haitian Education and Leadership Program scholar, leader isn’t just something you call yourself—it’s a calling.

When the dorms closed this spring due to gang violence, Dawoodly returned home and started Solèy Lete, a youth leadership program in La Plaine, the embattled neighborhood on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince where he grew up. He rented a classroom, organized materials, recruited mentors, and built a haven where adolescents—especially young girls—could learn about health, menstrual hygiene, emotional resilience, and leadership.

Then, one day, the armed gangs reached the city limits. And the gunfire started. Residents grabbed the emergency bags they stowed under their beds and ran into the night—Dawoodly among them, carrying only his backpack and uncertain of his next step.

But even in displacement, he refused to give up on his students.

“Even if I couldn’t be physically there,” he said, “I couldn’t let them down.”

From borrowed rooms across the city, Dawoodly sent voice-note lessons, coordinated with student leaders on WhatsApp, and shared learning materials through trusted neighbors. On a borrowed phone with a cracked screen, he recorded short video modules to keep the program alive. By summer’s end, forty young people completed the program—forty young lives touched by one student who risked his safety in the name of service.

When asked why he kept going, Dawoodly didn’t talk about what he couldn’t control, but about his love of home:

“If I don’t help the community I come from, who will? Service is not something you do when life is easy.”

This is what leadership looks like for our scholars—students who rise to serve, again and again. In the weeks ahead, we’ll introduce you to more young leaders answering the same call: If not us, then who?