Emmanuel Bizimana

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Slide - 50 years, 50 voices - Emmanuel Bizimana - 00:00
Yeah, my name is Emmanuel Bizimana, I am a student at UPEI and I am
majoring in Applied Communication, Leadership and Culture.


Slide - Before UPEI - 00:19 
Before I came to UPEI, I lived in Malawi, that's where I grew up; I did my
primary education, my secondary education, in Malawi, and upon finishing my
high school, I did an online program or a diploma, online for two years,
and then I applied for WUSC—That's World University Service of
Canada—and when I applied for WUSC, they selected my name and I came to
UPEI but before that, then my story began in Rwanda because by nationality
I am from Rwanda but then due to war that started in 1994, my parents had
to move to Malawi and that's why I kind of started my story from Malawi.


Slide - Preparing for Canada - 01:32
Before I came to UPEI, we had like a person who came to train us, so that
was like pre-departure orientation. We learned so many things about Canada,
we learned about Canadian seasons, which includes winter, we learned about
Canadian life, so I can say before I got selected into the program, I had
so many expectations, like I used to ask myself 'How does Canada look
like?' 'How do Canadian people live?' 'How can I fit in that environment?'
But, when we had this pre-departure orientation, some of the questions
which I had already answered and when I got here in UPEI or when I got to
Charlottetown, most of the things that I used to question were already
answered before I came here.


Slide - World University Services of Canada (WUSC) - 03:10 
As I say, the WUSC is an organization which supports refugees, it works
with SRP, that's Student Refugee Program. It helps it to support the
students to come to Canada as a permanent resident, when these students
come to, go to different universities, they meet local committees; these
local committees are the students, a group of students who come together to
support these WUSC students, so I can say that my relationship with the
other WUSC students at UPEI, we have a strong relationship because we meet
like every day to support each other, to remind ourselves the journey that
we started because before we came here like everybody had a different
mission or different goals that they wish to achieve.


Slide - Student Life - 04:37 
My life as a student involves so many things that is working, studying, and
also having time for myself. I am a full-time student, sometimes I take
four courses, five courses, three courses but then in addition to that I
have to work to like to get money to support myself, beside that I involve
myself in some extracurricular activities like for example, I am a member
of a student Catholic organization at UPEI, we meet some times in the week
of within a month to discuss catholic life and faith, also we have a mass,
holy mass, on Sundays at 6pm.


Slide - Attending the Canadian Catholic Student Association Conference -
06:01 
This conference was for peace and justice, so in this conference I learned
about the aboriginal people, the issues they are facing and the ways or how
we can help to create social justice.


Slide - Soup for the Soul - 06:32 
Soup for the soul is an event which happens three times a semester, as you
know, sometimes it gets busy for students, like as for myself, sometimes
when I have so many assignments I really don't have time to eat, so this
program or this event is free for any students or any person who wishes to
attend, so my goal this time was to, like, organize this event, so I [got]
involved in the marketing, that was like posting some– posting some
information on the soup for the soul website so that more people would
attend that program.


Slide - Applied Communication, Leadership and Culture (ACLC) - 07:52 
In this program we did so many things, including public speaking—like, as
I understand in this essentially, communication is a great skill to have
and in this program we really learned different ways of communicating, like
there is a course which I took—public speaking course, this semester, I
took professional writing. In this program or in this courses we have so
many presentations and this kind of, it improved the way we communicated,
the way we represent ourselves, so I can also say that this program is a
great program at UPEI because the program does not focus on one thing but
it focuses on various courses so students who are in this program have
opportunity to learn so many things.


Slide - Influential and Supportive Professors - 09:17 
I can talk of Lisa Chilton, she's the director of ACLC. She is supportive,
especially when you need something or you need clarification, you have some
issues. When you approach her she's willing to help you. I go to her to ask
for some advice and she's really willing to help me in time to upgrade my
academic life, apart from that there is Jean Mitchell, I remember when I
just got to Canada, I took Introduction to Anthropology, I really liked
this course because she was also supportive at this time, my English was a
bit low but then, after like– after class, I used to go in her office and
she would explain more of what I did not understand in the class. Till
today, she is still supportive.


Slide - Final Thoughts - 10:51 
The thing that UPEI is a small university makes it easy for students and
the professors to meet and discuss course materials. Professors know what
students need and students know what the professors require from them
because there is, like, one-on-one discussion, so UPEI is a great
university.