Two MDP Students recipients of UWGSS

Mon. Sep. 14, 2015

The Master’s in Development Practice Program would like to congratulate Leah McDonnell and Jasmin Winter for winning the 2015 University of Winnipeg Graduate Studies Scholarship (UWGSS). The prestigious scholarship is valued at $15,000 and is awarded on the basis of academic excellence and a commitment to community service.

Leah is entering her 2nd year of the MDP program and her research focuses on issues of trafficking Indigenous women and children in Winnipeg. Her interest in food security and the use of traditional ecological knowledge in sustainable food systems was broadened during a three-month placement with NorWest Co-op Community Food Centre. Leah has been extensively involved in grassroots community building. Currently she is volunteering for a women’s resource centre, sitting on an advocacy network. She is a Graduate co-chair UWSA and the cohort rep for MDP.

Jasmin is a recent graduate of McGill University’s International Development Studies program. During the school year, Jasmin was a mentor under McGill's Social Equity and Diversity Education Office for students transitioning into post-secondary education from the Kahnawake Survival School. Additionally, she volunteered at the Native Friendship Centre of Montreal as a member of the Street Patrol initiative, wherein she joined the mobile intervention team in distributing food and other social services to the at-risk urban Indigenous population living in downtown Montreal. For the past three summers she has been working as a program assistant for the organization Frontier College in the Cree community of Nemaska, Quebec.

“I cannot emphasize enough how refreshing and exciting it is to have found a graduate program so explicitly endorsing the vital contribution of Indigenous perspectives to the political, social and economic future of our world,” Jasmin Winter.

Congratulations Leah and Jasmin!