CTYA’s Blog has started a new Feature on Fridays, Thulirkal. Thulirkal meaning “bud” reflects the young Tamil youth we will be featuring. These youth are the buds of our community, and are growing into to strong, achieving young men and women! Each week we will feature a Tamil youth of the week. For more information or to suggest a youth to feature, please feel free to email us at blogs@ctya.org!
This week, we’ve brought you, Senthan Thirugnanasampanthan!
Senthan Thirugnanasampanthan was the recipient of the Top Talents 2012 Youth Volunteer Award. The Youth Volunteer Award is given to an individual who has shown meaningful volunteerism to organizations and community groups while striving to improve the quality of life for others with a commitment to make a difference. This year’s Youth Volunteer award was awarded in memory of Namanan Guhanathan.
CTYA Blog Team: Thank you Senthan for sitting down with us today. So, let’s get warmed up. Ok, now don’t think, just say what first comes to mind. 1, 2, 3…
1. Old Songs or New Songs? Old Songs
2. One place you’ve always wanted to visit? Amazon Rainforest
3. What are your nicknames? Don’t really have one to be honest.
4. If you were a superhero, what super power would you want? Invisibility
5. If you had a million dollars what is the first thing you would buy? Season tickets to the Leafs, Raptors, Jays, Argos, Rock, and Toronto FC. Yes I am a hearty Torontonian and a sports lover.
CTYA Blog Team: Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Senthan: I am fourth year York University student doing a double major in Political Science and Environmental Studies. I am a sports fanatic and I love music. I despise reading and I love dancing and singing (even though I am terrible at both), volunteering, exploring, writing poetry, and philosophizing. I also love being around positive people and ones that can make you laugh nonstop.
CTYA Blog Team: What is your most proud accomplishment to date?
Senthan: I believe my internship in the Philippines was probably my biggest accomplishment to date. I was hired as an economic development officer to help out with an eco-tourism project in Naga City, Philippines. It was a three month internship that absolutely changed my life. Working with many villagers and understanding many of the struggles within a third world country taught me so much as an individual, especially the things we take for granted in Canada. Living on my own was also a huge challenge. There were so many challenges along the way including, finding my own place to stay, food, laundry, language barriers, cultural barriers, and many more. Overcoming all of these challenges while being completely out of your comfort zone was an enormous challenge, but these challenges helped me realize my potential and has brought me closer to what I want to accomplish not only as a student, but as a human being.
CTYA Blog Team: Volunteerism is very important to the growth of a community, however, some youth fear that volunteering gets in the way of academics. What do you have to say to these youth? How were you able to manage your extensive volunteering with your course load?
Senthan: I have also heard this misconception that volunteering gets in the way of academics. Personally, I am the type of person that cannot just be doing one thing at a time. It’s just who I am. When I am doing multiple things at once, it keeps me occupied and motivated to get through all of my activities efficiently. As a former high school and a present university student, I feel that my volunteer experiences have taught me invaluable lessons that I wouldn’t have learned through academics. Volunteering taught and/or developed my cooperative skills, organizational skills, time management abilities, and leadership abilities. Volunteering also helped me identify my role models and how to become a good role model for the younger icons that want to make a difference in the world. It taught me to become more goal oriented, open minded, to be more socially and politically aware. I am not saying these assets are guaranteed with all volunteer experiences nor do I say volunteer experiences will never conflict with your academics. However, these challenges would be short term obstacles that can be hurdled easily by the skills that volunteering teaches you. My volunteering experiences provided me with high quality knowledge that inevitably led to the betterment of my grades.
CTYA Blog Team: Where do you see yourself in ten years? What do you hope to achieve in the next 10 years?
Senthan: I see myself working in the environmental sector helping to make our planet a greener place. Whether it’s cutting emissions, reducing pollution, alternative energy, compact city building, or more efficient public transport systems, I want to make sure that I continue to make a small contribution towards cleaning up the mess that we as humans have created. I also want to help accomplish some charity work and volunteer initiatives that I have in mind to lend a hand to the less fortunate. I also want to give back to the Tamil community through being a part of initiatives such as building a recreation centre, a library or a sports complex to help make sure that our kids not only learn and embrace our history/culture but also have the foundations to become successful, academically, athletically or in the stream of their choice.
CTYA Blog Team: Finish the sentence. “To me, Tamil youth are..”
Senthan: To me, Tamil youth are very similar to youth from other communities. Youth are confused, restless, eager to learn, and want to achieve enormous goals but tend to lack the foundations to achieve them. However, the uniqueness amongst Tamil youth is that we tend to stick together, help one another out, and understand the struggles that we all face, whether it’s family, community or back home issues. As Tamil Youth, we are a force to be reckoned with and as a whole, we cannot be stopped.
CTYA Blog Team: If you could say a few words to your younger self, what would you say?
Senthan: I wouldn’t say anything. I would just let things play out how it is. I have made countless mistakes but what I have also realized is that those mistakes have developed me into who I am and they have also strengthened my perspectives upon many issues. It has made me become more comfortable about myself and those mistakes have helped me understand what I truly want to accomplish with my life.
CTYA Blog Team: Anything else you’d like to add?
Senthan: I would like to finish off this interview with two quotes that continue to motivate me.
“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company… a church… a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past… we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you… we are in charge of our Attitudes.”
“Try to make every step in life count. The consequences of today are determined by the actions of the past. To change your future, alter your decisions today.”
CTYA Blog Team: Thanks Senthan for sharing your thoughts today. We hope other youth use your story as motivation to create change within their own communities!
Catch up with us next Friday where we’ll be bringing you another Talented Tamil youth story! For more information or to suggest a youth to feature, please feel free to email us at blogs@ctya.org!
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