Help Me Change the World — One Student at a Time

Hi everyone, Claire here, I hope you're doing well! Thank you for taking the time to click on this link and potentially support a great academic journey!

I have spent my entire adult life in pursuit of something bigger than myself; the belief that education, when made truly accessible, can change the course of a life, a community and ultimately humanity.

I am writing this with a full heart and a humble ask. I have just begun a two-year Master of Education in Student Affairs at Wilfrid Laurier University, and I need the support of my village to see it through.

Who I Am

I am not someone who has had things handed to her. I earned my Bachelor of Anthropology while working three jobs, simultaneously, for three of my four years of full-time study. I did not ask my extended family for help then. I am thankful for my immediate family and their support, how they cared and aided me during my undergrad. But life has a way of humbling even the most stubborn among us and I need my whole community to help me now.

In September 2022, during my final year of university while preparing for an archaeological field excavation in the coming summer with my professors at the University of Waterloo, I was in a serious car accident. What followed was one of the hardest chapters of my life: extensive physiotherapy, navigating a legal system that classified my injuries as "minor," and finishing my degree on a timeline that left no room for recovery. The out-of-pocket medical costs that piled up during that time forced me into a consumer proposal; a decision that has since restricted my access to OSAP funding.

I share this not for sympathy, but because it is the truth. And I have always believed that truth is where real connection begins.

What Shaped This Path

After completing my undergraduate degree, I made a quiet, intentional move to where I spent my summers as a child in Sioux Narrows. I searched for answers, I smudged to spirit, I prayed to my ancestors, I meditated in the lands that I grew up playing in trying to identify where to focus all of my ambitions. What I found in my introspection was stillness, where in that stillness was clarity. Years of reflection helped me understand not just who I am, but what I am here to do. I came to understand that the change I want to see in the world begins with education: not education as a privilege, but education as a right, and a lifeline. A Masters was in the making.

That conviction was set on fire in the summer of 2023, when I had the extraordinary opportunity to work for six weeks in Jordan. That experience opened a door I never knew existed and solidified my commitment to repatriating education to communities that have been historically excluded from it. Indigenous communities that are struggling, systemically disadvantaged and too often left behind by the very institutions meant to serve them. I saw, up close, what it looks like when education is restored to people who have been denied it, and I knew: this is the work.

Why This Degree, Why Now

The MEd in Student Affairs at Laurier is the precise intersection of everything I have been building toward. It will equip me with the tools, the theory, and the practice to work directly with post-secondary students; particularly those navigating the system from the margins. Students who grew up in socioeconomic precarity. Students who feel lost, unseen, or unworthy of belonging in academia. Students who need someone in their corner who truly gets it. And I feel like I can provide that.

I have spent years in and around academic institutions in student-facing roles, community service and extracurricular leadership rooted in education equity; all because I could never stop caring about this work. My thirst for knowledge and for meaningful contribution has never wavered. This graduate program is not a detour. It is the destination I have been walking toward my whole life.

What I Am Asking

I am asking for help. That is not something that comes easily to me; I have spent most of my life finding a way to figure it out aside my immediate family.

Any contribution — truly, any — will go directly toward tuition, living expenses and the ability to give this program my full focus. You are not just helping me get a degree. You are helping me become someone who will spend the rest of her career paying it forward to students who need it most.

To every person who has ever believed in me, cheered for me from a distance, or simply held space for who I am becoming: thank you. From the bottom of my heart. This moment, this program, this chance...it will change the trajectory of my life. And I intend to use every bit of it in service of others.

With deep gratitude and love,

Claire Reynolds (She/Her/They).

BA Honours Anthropology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo ON, CA.

ᑮᑕᐦᑕᐑ ᒦᓇ ᑮᐦᑖᐧᒼ kîtahtawê mîna kîhtwâm (Perhaps one time we’ll meet again).