The Dominican public education teacher and employee of an NGO, Belisa Howard, was a finalist for the Global Award for Students, among 7,000 applications from 150 countries.
Howard, a native of Puerto Plata, was privileged to be among the 50 selected, who will be awarded $100,000 if she wins.
The Global Student Prize awards the excellent academic performance and the social impact of the participants.
The young woman highlighted her great happiness for this achievement, said that despite being a single mother, it has been her strength to continue expanding her knowledge and currently
is pursuing three master’s degrees simultaneously; a Linguistics Applied to the Teaching of the English Language at the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD), another in Educational Technology and Digital Competences at the International University of La Rioja in Mexico and the last one in Digital Marketing at UNIR Spain, in all of them it has been an outstanding student with an index of 98/100 and 9.5/10.
Belisa also supports her family with three jobs, she is an English teacher at Liceo José Dubeaú and at Universidad Dominicana O&M, where she was incorporated thanks to her educational leadership and her support of her classmates, in addition to graduating with honors.
Another of his great performance is being Marketing Manager of the non-profit educational project DREAM, through which he helps various programs to spread digital media and education through “DREAM at HOME.
Likewise, it is proud to be leading the dissemination of the Única App, created by girls from the Cabarete community who belong to the Única program and has directly impacted more than 3,000 girls. Such an application educates people on the topic of teen pregnancy, sex education, self-knowledge. -esteem, and avoiding violence, given that the Dominican Republic has one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancy. The Unica app was supported by the Canadian Embassy and the US non-profit organization RISE (formerly Together Women Rise).
A social media and marketing genius, Belisa has created a YouTube channel, a Facebook page, and a website where she shares resources on teaching the English language, reaching thousands of people to date. .
“Since its launch last year, the Global Student Prize has given incredible students from around the world the opportunity to share their stories, connect with one another and reach influencers in education and beyond,” said Dan Rosensweig, CEO. of Chegg.
If Belisa would win, she indicated that among her projects to be implemented are: The first is a campaign on social networks to combat cyberbullying and other cybercrimes. She believes that social media is an essential and powerful tool and she wants to use it to help reach more youth and raise awareness of cybercrime among parents.
The second would be to promote the Única App to reach other Latin American countries with high rates of teenage pregnancy, and would also work with the DREAM project to create a mobile library and book fairs for young people and adults to promote a culture of reading in their community.
