On the advice of the Dominican nuns who oversaw Catholic education in Aruba, she went by boat to the Netherlands at age 15 to study at a school in Reuver.
[1] When Paskel, along with Magdalena de Cuba, passed the teacher's exam in 1931, the two became the first Aruban schoolteachers to graduate in the Netherlands.
[3] The manuscript, written in Dutch, provides a description of Aruba's population, its early history, its growth and development in the 1940s, and its flora and fauna.
[5][6] Wernet-Paskel became politically active through community organizing, running campaigns for the hungry in the Netherlands during the war years, particularly during the Dutch famine of 1944–45.
[3] In 1948, the National Aruban Union (UNA) party was formed, and Wernet-Paskel, who was by then a well-known figure in the Roman Catholic community, joined.
Universal suffrage was introduced to the Netherlands Antilles that year, which allowed women to vote in the next elections on March 17, 1949.
After a split in the party, Wernet-Paskel allied with UNA-II, the Catholic branch led by Apolonio (Poy) Werleman.