R&S Story

I cannot recall the first time I saw Sherlande. I had an embarrassing moment in Pre-school, my classmates took the opportunity to tease me about it for the rest of the year. She was not one of them; since then, I started paying attention to who was mean, and their assigned seat to avoid them. Soon, everyone forgot about the situation, or at least they were no longer teasing me about it. However, I kept track of where she sat. She was the most intelligent girl in our class, always top 3. In 5th grade, I became number 1 in our class. Yet, she never evades me. We went to different High schools; other girls were at the top of my class. None of them stayed with me the way she did. I moved to America in 2008, we lost touch. In 2018, my guardian angel [Robens], myself, and KB joined forces to start BASSA to help alleviate health and education disparities within our community. Sherlande saw our Facebook page, she reached out. We had a weekly meeting on Sunday night. In September 2020, she was working night, I had to update her on her task and our plan. In December 2020, we started sharing our values, our goals, and the individual plans we had outside of the organization. We quickly realized we have more in common than to help our community. The rest will be shared with you in Cancun on June 18, 2026.