By Idara Effiom Summer of 2019 was a very interesting one for me. It was a summer of exploration, professional development, travel and volunteerism. I got to explore southern Vietnam, live in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly known as Saigon) for a month and work with my favourite demographic of people- children! Talk about a […]
“Minding” the Gap: A Mental Health Awareness Project
-Alyssa Mae Domingo When I applied to Peter Lougheed Leadership College, I knew I wanted to give back to the country where I grew up in, the Philippines. The 200-hour “stretch experience” is a great opportunity to make it happen. I started from scratch with only the “motivation” and the “purpose” in mind to do […]
My Life-changing Teaching Experience in Natal, Brazil
“Olá, meu nome e Xiaole.” On June 27th, I arrived in Natal, Brazil. On August 14th, I left my older version of myself in this charming and magical city. As an English teacher, I volunteered for 6 weeks in Centro Educacional Dom Bosco, a Catholic informal education school that has different social projects for children […]
Mbolo Moy Dole: A Story of Leading Through Change
Julia-Don Edwards The bussling East African urban centre of Nairobi is known for many things; vibrant markets, epic traffic jams, and, most exciting to me, a powerful underground theatre community. In July, I was privileged enough to witness a group of young theatre artists from Mathare, Nairobi’s largest collection of slums, use public performance and […]
Stretching at TusStar in China
Hello! My name is Xiaoyu Jin. My stretch experience starts at TusStar, which is one of the largest business incubators in China. What is TusStar? What does business incubator do? TusStar is the leading university science park incubator in China. Its holding company is owned by Tsinghua University. TusStar helps startups and scaleups to develop […]
La vie à Grenoble: What could go wrong?
By: John Chmilar We have all heard about the student who went abroad for a semester and came back and tells stories about how it “totally changed their life”. It happens because of all the problems you face! The first thing I realized upon arriving in France is that my French is nowhere near as […]
Beyond Bones
By Joanna Pearce “The toe bone’s connected to the foot bone. The foot bone’s connected to the ….” Everyone knows the song, but you don’t often expect to have the chance to be faced with the real thing. “The distal phalanx is connected to the intermediate phalanx…” doesn’t have the same ring, but it certainly […]
Unity through Empathy
By Jenna Mulji In April 2015, the Nepalese earthquake destroyed many homes, taking over 9,000 lives and injuring at least 22,000 people. Four years after, the repercussions of this earthquake are still felt, both within urban centres such as Kathmandu, as well as the rural areas, where government help is less accessible. Despite the trauma […]
Open-ing up our Education
By: Akanksha Bhatnagar 2018 was the first year I travelled completely alone. A backpack, myself and my headphones with a broken left ear. I was sitting on the New York Subway, honestly pretty nervous and I was walking around downtown Toronto just hoping to meet Drake. This year, my Stretch Experience allowed me to travel […]
Kissing Without Tongue
A Blog Post by Tanisha Kotowich In conjunction with the documentary “Tanisha Takes Ukraine“ In front of you stands a stout man, totaling five feet ten inches; he is as wide as he is tall. The sweat on his face accumulates as rapidly as the Ukrainian words spilling from his mouth. You, with no […]
Foreign Business Culture
This summer has been hands down one of the most memorable summers I’ve had. I was able to connect back to my roots and was able to land a volunteering position at an accounting and taxation clinic in India. Not only was this stretch experience a great learning experience for me in terms of learning […]
When Teaching Becomes Learning
Hallo semuanya. Nama saya Snehaa. Aku dari Canada!! My first introduction was one of the ongoing jokes some of my students in Bandung, Indonesia had about me. Clad in a long cotton dress with Indian patterns, and dangling jhumkas, I would proudly say that I was Canadian, with ready responses to any protests or confused […]
PLLC Stretch 