Jasneet Kour is determined to make the move to Timmins smoother for international students.
When she came to town in 2019, it wasn’t an easy transition for her.
“Our start was not really good here, so we decided to help others that were coming,” said Kour.
She eventually settled in and completed her education at Northern College.
Her husband, Gunmeet Singh, joined her in Timmins from India a year after her initial move and he's helped her with her community-building work, and her YouTube channel, which offers information to those coming from India, since then.
Timmins appealed to the couple because it is a smaller community and offered a chance to strike out on their own.
“My brothers and cousins are in Brampton and Toronto, so we had support,” said Singh. “I thought we should go to a small place and we should do it on our own.”
“Some people like cities, but for us, we can go there for a few days, but not to live there,” said Kour.
Her YouTube channel didn’t start out as educational, though it has grown into that with over 4,500 followers.
It began as a personal collection of videos, but on her and her husband’s first anniversary, when he was still in India, she created a video about their love story and it went viral.
“It got millions of views,” said Kour. “After that, I started getting questions on my Instagram about Timmins from students asking things like ‘are you living in the woods?’ or ‘will they accept us there?’ so I started answering them in messages.”
She used this new larger platform to dispel some of the misinformation she heard about Northern Ontario before she got here, and give potential international students information on the community and what to expect.
“So we made a video and posted it on YouTube and we started getting more inquiries.”
Kour said those questions drive the content on the channel and they have expanded to help create a support network for students and those who are already here, through chat groups and her videos.
“There are groups for each intake so that students can meet each other and talk about their goals, and they can be friends before coming here,” said Kour. “We picked up between 60 and 70 people from the airport for the September intake.”
She said that the opening of the Gurdwara Sikh Sangat of Timmins has given a lot of people comfort and a connection that otherwise would have been harder to build.
“They allow the students to stay there and that was a great help.”
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The channel, going forward, will continue to focus on potential students’ questions, and Kour, Singh and their friends will continue to support those who are coming to Timmins for their education.
“It’s a 24/7 job, all the time there are messages,” said Kour. “We try to be their family here.”
