Today, for the 28th day of the "Women's History Month" project, we are celebrating this fantastic young woman
Meet Margarida Celestino, 18, an older sister, student, ambitious and very hardworking...
Meet Margarida Celestino. She is 18 years old and currently finishing her senior year at Casco Bay High School in Portland, Maine. The oldest of 4 children, she was born in Luanda, Angola in Southern Africa, where she lived for the first 8 years of her life. In 2010, she and her family moved to Windhoek, Namibia. When in Namibia, Margarida had to adapt to a completely different cultural environment. In addition to speaking her native language of Portuguese and Lingala, she now had to learn English and Afrikaans to communicate in Namibia. And when her youngest brother Abel was born completely deaf, she learned Namibian Sign Language as well.
In March of 2017, Margarida's family migrated to the United States and settled in Portland, Maine. Here they carved a new life for themselves and made this small, unfamiliar city their new home. She briefly attended King Middle School for about a month before summer vacation, and in the fall of 2017, she began attending Casco Bay High School. In just five months, she had moved a whole continent away, attended three different schools and experienced culture shock each time. Life was not easy with so much transition and uncertainty, and Margarida fell into a depression. She sought the help of a social worker, who showed her how to build back her happiness from scratch and things soon improved.
Margarida had three goals when she began her new high school: to thrive academically, to get involved, and to be happy. She had her ups and downs, but with the support from her teachers, family, and friends, she persevered. She learned time management skills to help her stay ahead of her schoolwork, and soon she was able to make time to volunteer in her community. By making time to help others, she found that volunteering helped her network in her own life, improve her happiness, and allowed her to be more connected to her school and community. And the benefits of volunteering continued to bloom from there. Suddenly, Margarida was stepping out of her comfort zone more and more. She joined Portland's Telling Room with the "Young Writers and Leaders" program to assist her with literacy skills, writing and public speaking. After a year, she was asked to become part of the leadership committee program as an Ambassador, helping them make decisions with events and programs they host - an amazing lifelong opportunity to assist other young adults like herself in their own literacy journeys. At the end of her sophomore year, Margarida ran for school president and won! She found her life was slowly getting better and better because she was truly finding herself and was accepted into multiple clubs and programs. In her junior and senior year, she continued on as school president and began a new club. She founded the "Casco Bay High School Black Girls Affinity Group" which she calls “SIR” inspired by the Maya Angelou poem “Still I Rise.” Despite all adversity, Margarida was truly a stellar student, and feels she achieved her high school academic goals.
Despite all the volunteering work that Margarida does, she is also working at ABBOTT where she is assembling COVID rapid test as a production specialist. On top of working 48 hours a week she still is a full time student. It is not easy but it shows that she is an ambitious young woman and a go getter!
Attending school in America was a huge change from what she was accustomed to in Africa. For her, coming to America meant having a second chance at everything, and that is why she continues to grasp at every opportunity that comes her way. Margarida was nominated by her teachers to apply for a national scholarship program called "QuestBridge," and in her senior year she was offered a full scholarship to Colgate University. She will be attending the university in the fall of 2021. Margarida says life may not always be perfect, but it is slowly becoming what she always imagined. And she will never settle for second best, because she still has many dreams to accomplish. Her future is very bright.
Margarida's favorite quote is:
"Be the change you want to see in the world"
- Mahatma Gandhi
*****
Thank you, Margarida, for sharing your story with us!
#whm #womenshistorymonthproject #womansupportingwomen #womenempowerment
1 Comments
Mar 28, 2021, 7:41:44 PM
Judy Gray - Stunning!