He dropped out of school, started cartoning and an interview on TV changed his life: “They left me speechless”

Antonella was 11 when she was photographed studying on the street, while her parents were begging. Six years later, in 2022, the TN journalist valeria sampedro contacted her to find out the impact of that photo, but her situation had not changed: “Don’t think I’m much better than before”, had been his first response. What he did not imagine was that this report would transform his life.

Among the viewers was a man who would become the answer to her needs. This is Horacio, president of SCIS, a private medicine company. “More than once you wake up and turn on the television,” said the businessman about the moment he came across Antonella’s story and decided to help her. Today, that girl who went through so many difficulties has a job and finished her studies.

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Study, a truncated goal

In the report published in 2022, Antonella recalled everything she experienced after the photo: “I felt ashamed, I didn’t tell anyone that I had been left on the street. I was trying to do my best but It was hard for me to study, because of the noise. They had given me the government computer and I was looking for a place to have Wi-Fi”.

Six years after the photo, Antonella was cartoning. The 11-year-old girl who moved the country with her folder on her lap, stubborn in cheating his fate as a poor man with the studythe same one who finished primary school with an exemplary bulletin and continued to make an effort to complete her education and get ahead, was on the street and could not continue with secondary school.

The solidarity barrage that had saved her in childhood, after her minute of media notoriety, lasted four months. Mattresses, kitchen, refrigerator; a life worth borrowing that lasted too short.

Antonella had to drop out of high school to work, her mother moved away, her brothers took other directions, and her father asked again on the same corner.

Antonella was left homeless with her family, she was photographed studying on the sidewalk, and six years later she recounted that she had to stop studying because she worked to survive at the age of 17. (Photo: Telenoche Capture)

“God gave me everything I wanted”

After seeing Antonella’s story, Horacio contacted her through a third party to offer her a job. “At that time, she came with her boyfriend. Both were on the streets. I said ‘we have to take them both’, because I can’t take the girl off the street and not take the boy out,” Horacio recalled. However, the job opportunity included an essential requirement, both had to finish high school.

“They left me speechless,” said the young woman in a video posted by the Twitter account called Argentine talent. When she appeared on television, she worked as a cartonera and dreamed of continuing her studies. Now, speaks from an office, works in the administrative area and married his partner.

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Antonella is grateful for the twist in her story. “My thing was to eat or work; have a roof or study. God told me ‘not there’, study and work and he gave me everything I wanted. I have my things, my space, my husband, they can’t be bought with anything, ”she assured excitedly.