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Hello everybody, my name is Anthony. I am a foreign student in Quebec, currently studying electrical engineering at Polytechnique of Montréal. My goal and dream are to work in automation and hopefully smart cities.
Like a lot of people, things have been very very hard financially since COVID hit. My parents who economically support me, are in Haiti still and are at their wits' end with the terrible humanitarian crisis that is raging on at the moment. Their job hours have been cut as well as their revenues for a variety of terrible reasons: extreme gang violence, political instability, gas crisis, the impact of COVID on the health care workers, and many more. Every time, I talk to them over the phone, I can see how overstressed they are. On my hand, I thankfully found an internship in a wonderful nonprofit organization called Genie Lab in Montréal. This organization has given me so much practical experience in electronics and teaching kids complex subjects, I'd trade it for no other. If you are interested in AI, electronics, light shows, computers, and/or in doing fun art and music projects, I very much invite you to take a peek at our website: https://genielab.co/fr/ . One of the aspects of GenieLab I am very passionate about is our social mission. At GenieLab, we aim to bring the new possibilities of AI and electronics to marginalized people from all walks of life. We have had joint projects and meetings with indigenous people to better ensure a smooth integration of AI and virtual reality in their way of life. Similarly, we've built electronics workshops specifically for children with learning difficulties. Further workshops and educational toys are in the works that include visually impaired and or deaf people. All of this is why I am so adamant to keep working in GenieLab.
Unfortunately, since Genie Lab are still a relatively small nonprofit and in the middle of a pandemic, I was not able to receive a salary for my first 6 months of internship, as this would make them go over their already allocated annual internship budget. I decided to do my internship even without a salary. I learned so much and loved the atmosphere there so much, I did it for free to get experience and contribute to their social mission. I worked 2 part-time jobs on the side, one as a call agent, one as a dishwasher to help my struggling parents, to lessen the blow. But the past few months have only been getting harder to make ends meet. Thankfully, we found an opportunity! We found a paid internship program called Mitacs Accelerate. Here it is:
It basically exists to help small companies like ours hire young students like me by giving funding. It is also, the ONLY program like this that takes care of international students. We were overjoyed! I can get a good salary, help my parents and do something I love! There is, still, an obstacle however and this is why I'm humbly requesting your kind help. Mitacs ask that a contribution of 2500$ be given by the organization that takes in the intern. Then, in turn, they can start the funding. Genie Lab does not have that kind of money at the moment. We were hit as well by the terribly rising rent prices following COVID and are trying to save money as much as possible.
That's why I am asking you all, friends, family, kind strangers of the Internet, please help me with this if you can. I want to continue working and practice my engineering skills at this organization. I also need a good salary that can take the weight off my parent's shoulders. If I get the Mitacs funding, I could pay my own rent and my mom could be far less anxious. If you cannot help financially, I completely understand, I would be grateful even if you only share it around.
I hope you all have a good day or night!
