This article features Haitian Education & Leadership Program, Haiti's largest university-scholarship program, which provides merit scholarships to students in the top 10 percent of their high-school classes in the country's poorest areas. On average, the scholarships pay students $4,100, which covers tuition, textbooks, and school supplies, basic living expenses, an internship program, and academic and social counseling. The nonprofit organization, known by its acronym, HELP, is now based in New York, where a donor offered office space and the group's head of development, Rosemarie Stupel, lives. The organization started in 1997 when Isemonde Josephe, a straight-A high-school student from Port-au-Prince's notorious Cite Soleil slum, asked her teacher, Conor Bohan, for a $30 loan to attend secretarial school. Aware of Ms. Joseph's desire to become a doctor, not a secretary, Mr. Bohan offered to pay for her first year's medical-school tuition and textbooks. In 2005, Ms. Joseph received her M.D. and now practices at Port-au-Prince's Gheskio Center, Haiti's premier organization for AIDS research and treatment.