How Dechen Found Belonging Through Education

Raised within the Tibetan community in India, her early years were shaped by a strong sense of identity, culture, and resilience - alongside the realities of growing up in exile, where questions of belonging and future often live quietly in the background.

What she did not expect was how living alongside young people from across the world would begin to reshape the way she saw her own experiences. For the first time, the things that made her different did not feel like something to explain. They became part of how she listened, how she learned, and how she began to imagine what her own contribution might one day look like. 

Today, Dechen is studying in a dual-degree nursing programme in Canada, spending long days in hospitals, classrooms, and clinical placements - learning not only the science of care, but what it means to stand beside people in some of the most uncertain moments of their lives.

But even as her journey continues across continents, her sense of purpose remains closely tied to where it began. One day, Dechen hopes to return to her local hospital in India - the place that first inspired her to pursue nursing - so that the care she is learning to give across continents can one day reach the community that first shaped her.

For the patients she will one day care for, that journey may mean more than medical expertise alone. It may mean being treated by someone who understands what it feels like to navigate uncertainty, adapt to unfamiliar places, and find strength along the way.

Your support helps young people like Dechen carry knowledge, care, and opportunity back to the communities that shaped them.