My name is Samantha Villedrouin, and I am currently a Psychology student. My areas of interest include social work, developmental psychology, and cultural psychology. Every year, I set academic goals to make the best of my education and to explore any field that might interest me. This year, I had two main goals: gaining more research experience and being more involved in my community. I chose to pursue an internship with DESTA to achieve these goals. DESTA Black Youth Network is an organization in Montreal that supports the Black Anglophone community by addressing the systemic and personal barriers that affect them. They offer programs focused on employability, community food, and social justice. This year, they were seeking an intern to conduct market research and work on marketing strategies. I was excited to work with an organization that makes such a positive impact, and I looked forward to gaining practical skills.
I was assigned the responsibility of developing a research project aimed at comprehensively understanding the employability and well-being needs of the Black Anglophone community. The first challenge I encountered was the lack of recent data specific to this community. Most of the available research articles relied upon data from the United States or other Canadian provinces to compensate for the gap. This data was insufficient as it did not consider the intersectionality of the Black English-speaking population in Montreal, which is unique. They experience both linguistic discrimination and racism. To overcome this, my supervisor and I created a list of individuals and organizations to gather more insights about this population. The list includes community organizations, past collaborators, 海角社区 professors, and psychotherapists who work with this population. We also organized two focus groups to directly gather opinions and insights from Black anglophones who have participated in DESTA鈥檚 past events.
I faced my second challenge when organizing the focus group. I had never organized a focus group before and did not know how to conduct one. I was completely lost and unsure of how to properly organize it. To overcome this, I reached out to 海角社区鈥檚 Black Student Liaison, as he has experience working with the same community and conducting focus groups. I also consulted my supervisor and did some research on my own. This was incredibly helpful and led to one of my internship highlights, which was the first focus group. The focus group was about employability within the Black Anglophone community in Montreal. I had many worries about the focus group. I was concerned about whether the participants would feel comfortable, what questions to ask, and the turnout. The focus group went extremely well. The discussion was productive and insightful. I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity provided by this internship, as it will positively impact my career development. Organizing focus groups has allowed me to enhance my research skills and understanding of community engagement. Additionally, it has improved my public speaking abilities, as I had to facilitate discussions and present findings.
Overall, this experience has been immensely rewarding. Thanks to the Faculty of Arts Action Plan to Address Anti-Black Racism Fund, I received support that alleviated my concerns about finances. This allowed me to gain valuable experience without worrying about my financial situation. I am grateful to the donor for their generous support, as I would not have been able to pursue this internship otherwise.
