I have been accepted to over 15 universities, including Fordham University, Binghamton University and the Fairfield University Honors Program. However, my situation does not allow me to apply to FAFSA for financial aid, so I cannot currently afford to make my educational dreams come true. Even though Fairfield University and Fordham University awarded me scholarships, over half of my tuition is not covered. Please read my story below and consider donating to help me make it to college.

Every little bit counts! Even one dollar is a dollar closer to college for me.

Here is my story:


5:00 AM: The streets of the South Bronx have become familiar with the song of my feet running all the way down the street to go to my favorite place:  school.  My alarm clock has become my mother, waking me up and pushing me out of the door. My Puma backpack is my best friend. To it, I entrust my whole life: my soccer cleats, books, pencils and a flash drive for my videos. This backpack became my pillow and companion while I bounce from house to house.

5:00 AM has become a daily reminder that I’m not defined by my story.

My name is Matias Thiam. I was born in Africa.  By the time I was eight years old, I was abandoned by my father, and I witnessed my mother struggle with health problems, poverty, and an abusive marriage. I juggled between different cities and countries. Senegal. Mali. And Guinea. I was never able to spend more than six months in the same school. I routinely lost everything and could not pursue what I wanted most: school.

By the age of 15, I learned what it meant to be an orphan. An orphan is a child who travels to the United States alone in pursuit of an education. It is having to navigate the streets of New York without knowing English, while simultaneously having to cope with my mother’s death three months after my arrival to the “Big Apple”. It is having to sit on the train with an empty stomach, trying to figure out when my next meal will come. It’s having to sleep on the train.

Not having parents and being homeless never stopped me from pursuing school.  When I got to the United States, for the first time I didn’t have to worry about getting kicked out of school because my mother could not pay tuition. In September 2016, I finally started high school in New York as a junior without speaking English and with only the clothes on my back. However, I knew I was born to attend college. I met friends at school who allowed me to sometimes spend the night at their houses. I wake up every day at 5am so that I can catch the train and be the first student at school to get breakfast. I’m also the last to leave school around 8pm, because I stay to complete homework and volunteer.

I wake up every day to go to school, with images of the people who died from bullet wounds in Ivory Coast’s civil war, the millions of people living without electricity, and the young girls living through the same experiences that my mother went through. All of these images come to me at 5 A.M., when I am getting ready to go to a classroom filled with students who only know me as Matias, the kid from Africa.

At around 10:00 P.M., I walk into my makeshift living room: Starbucks. It is here that I have internet access and can finish my homework. It is the Starbucks employee who encourages me with free drinks and reminders: “One day, all of this work will be worth it.”

My education is the only thing that has never left me. It followed me from city to city, and country to country. It is the only thing that I can truly call my own. College is where my ideas will be born, and a place I will finally be able to call home. Because of this, I believe in my passions; I believe in my dreams; I believe in the power of education.

5:00 AM is the beginning of my journey, the journey I’ve nicknamed, “hope.”