Alfonsina is a 2021 graduate of Pathways Kingston, which they joined in Grade 11 after arriving in Canada from Mexico. After Pathways, Alfonsina was accepted into Queen’s University, where they now study Drama. In their spare time, Alfonsina volunteers as a Pathways Alumni Ambassador.
A few years after moving to Canada, Alfonsina is happy to have left behind a difficult situation at home. Still, Alfonsina’s journey to Canada with their mother and sibling in 2021 was far from easy. Most of the family’s savings were stolen by an illegitimate immigration consultant at home, leaving Alfonsina’s family in a particularly precarious situation. “We were really struggling economically the first year of living in Canada. We were living in a basement, and the first month we were here, our utility bill was $300, and we really didn’t know how to deal with it,” Alfonsina explains.
On top of this, successive lockdowns and pandemic-related disruptions impacted Alfonsina’s adjustment to high school in a new country. “School was online, and it was way harder because no one would talk in any of the classes. It was just all of us sitting in silence. No one would even turn their cameras on. You didn’t know anyone there.”
Alfonsina signed up for the Pathways Program through their school just a couple of weeks after arriving in Canada, and they were surprised by the support the program could offer.
The first thing Pathways staff helped Alfonsina do was to contact the utility company to address the unexpected bill. Then, Pathways pointed the family to resources they could access to deal with this and other challenges related to their relocation. “That really helped, because my English wasn’t so good back then,” Alfonsina explains. “If I needed help with something, I knew that the Pathways staff member I worked with was the one who could help me.”
Little by little, things got easier for Alfonsina. Their family moved to a better location, and as things started to reopen, Alfonsina met friends at school. That allowed them to focus on the next big project: applying to post-secondary. Alfonsina hadn’t been in Canada for long, but they had access to the right supports to help them submit their application to Queen’s University. “At Pathways, I was able to get help applying,” Alfonsina explains. “The program also really helped with the cost of applications. Then one day, I got an email and it said, ‘You got in!’”
Today, Alfonsina is still dealing with challenges that many newcomers face, like the additional burden of international student tuition fees. Still, they’re proud of attending one of Canada’s most renowned schools, and in their spare time, they are an active volunteer with many community organizations. Most recently, they’ve taken on a one-year term as a Pathways Alumni Ambassador. “I really appreciate what Pathways did for me,” Alfonsina explains. “This is just my way of giving back.”