Helloo ! My name is Sesade Quitte-Wellin in Tlicho it means (Sunshine) in English, I am 18 years old and I am from an isolated community in the NWT called Gameti NT in the Tlicho region!

All the hard work in the NYA Next Program is a really long lasting experience. I’ll forever cherish living life on campus and being independent away from home. 

So the first week of orientation I was very excited to meet everyone there. As I took part of the NYA Canadian Program last year and I fell in-love with the NYA program and experienced so many new places did so many things, I loved the idea that I can go travel and experience so many opportunities while I can, and see my options about college or even in the beauty industry as I want to become a Esthetician related (Skin Care) field, I’m realizing a lot about myself, is that I’m pretty up beat and go with the flow and have that Sunshine attitude “energy” haha ! 

Day to day life on Algonquin campus is really hectic, working on our summer assignments and currently writing my blog about my experience here in Ottawa, we have no time for unnecessary distractions as we have to work towards our high school credits to graduate school in being on the NYA Program during our summer break, which I enjoy.

We do daily construction classes on weekdays where we built picture frames, foot stools and dog houses. Lastly we have a cooking/baking class every Monday. We also had another workshop with INSPIRE, where we learned many different topics about business/entrepreneurship. It was a learning experience for everyone on the program!

We volunteered at many places like the HOPE volleyball fest, the Glebe seniors place where we fixed the gardening outside. And probably a few more but I forgot already.

My favourite part about being on the program is everyone’s personality and humour and all the fun places we went together like the Mooney’s bay beach, Lebanese festival, parliament, fun haven, we went Rock climbing where I gotten anxious by climbing the wall then me and Marisa met our residence friend who wanted us to go try Zoomba.

Once the program is over, I’m going to miss every single one of the NYA Next participants for sure.

And of course the people I’ve bonded with. Truly a lifetime experience, all amazing people and have such a good heart. 

A huge thank you to NYA for the hectic, fun summer giving us all the experience for life in college and all kinds of options to live and grow by.