If it’s true that home is where the heart is, Sarah-Michelle Howard ’16 will have quite a three weeks to remember — visiting “family” in Bulembu, a small town located in the Kingdom of Swaziland.

Howard graduated from South Lake High School in Clermont, Fla., as well as Stetson, about a two-hour drive up Interstate 4. Yet, in the days leading up to her journey of some 8,500 miles, she couldn’t have been more excited.

“Swaziland is more home to me than the United States,” she says with her patented broad smile and without a hint of disrespect. “My heart’s just been aching to go back.”

For most of her trip, the graduate of Stetson’s Bonner Scholars Program (General Studies in Education) is lending a hand in impoverished Bulembu. Swaziland, a sovereign state neighbored by Mozambique and South Africa, is one of last complete monarchies in Africa. It’s also a place with one of the worst HIV rates in the world and negative population growth. Bulembu, a deserted mining town, is filled with hundreds of orphans — newborns, boys and girls — in need of care. Landmark change is afoot, with entrepreneurs from abroad coming to rebuild hope. Bulembu Ministries Swaziland provides everything the orphans might need, including placement in a home with a caregiver, a school (The Bulembu Christian Academy) and a health clinic. Howard, whose parents were missionaries, is there to help renovate buildings and mentor children.

One girl, in particular, stands out. Let’s call her Nicky (real name withheld). Howard met Nicky in 2011 during her first trip to Bulembu. An aid volunteer, Howard had just graduated from high school and was assigned to Nicky’s house, where she lived with several other girls. The two bonded. They met again two years later when Howard led a trip of Stetson Bonner students to Swaziland. Howard didn’t think Nicky, who was several years younger, would remember her. She was mistaken.

“I was doing a tour of the school. Nicky ran up to me, gave me a big hug, called my name and said, ‘You’re back. I’ve missed you so much.’ It was just like no time had passed,” Howard recounts.

Much time, in fact, has passed and progress has been made. Another reason for Howard’s trek across the globe: Nicky’s graduation. Emblematic of new hope, Nicky, at roughly age 18, has made it through Bulembu’s emerging makeshift education system. As part of the town’s rebirth, schooling is provided to the children, who advance based on ability, not age. Nicky, says Howard, took the opportunity and “ran with it.”

“I’m so proud of her,” Howard continues. “She has so much life in her. She watched her parents pass away from AIDS; she watched them suffer through it. And yet she still has this hope and this vibrancy. And she has dreams.”

Howard describes Bulembu as a “beacon of hope for Swaziland.” Noting that the town is located next to the highest mountain in Swaziland, she says, “It literally is a city of light on a hill.”

Howard is a beacon, too. She was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, when her parents were missionaries in that country for seven years. She lived in Swaziland until age four before moving to Tennessee, Oregon and Florida. Her parents now live in Orlando, where her father is a hospital chaplain. For Howard, giving isn’t new, but it’s never gotten old.

Her Bonner education reinforced lifelong lessons. The national Bonner Scholars initiative, established by the Corella and Bertram F. Bonner Foundation in 1990, is designed to provide students with “access to education and an opportunity to serve” and has grown to become the largest privately funded, service-based, college scholarship program in the country. Stetson, starting its program in 2005, has the oldest, largest and only endowed Bonner program in Florida.

Howard moved to the head of the class. During her time at Stetson, she taught disadvantaged young students and fed the homeless. Also, she has touched countless lives far away, including a new graduate with a brighter tomorrow. Howard hopes to live in DeLand (her boyfriend is a Stetson Bonner student) and teach elementary school, but first had to make her trip.

“I absolutely love helping people,” she says. “It’s what really makes me happy.”

Howard then adds another benefit, one she receives while giving.

“In the end,” she concludes, “they teach you something.”

By Michael Candelaria