What is the Pathy Foundation Fellowship?

The Pathy Foundation Fellowship is a 12-month, fully funded fellowship for graduating students who design and lead a community-based initiative.

Applications for the 2027-28 cohort are expected to open in September 2027

As a fellow, you will enhance your:

  • Professional development skills: Learn how to pitch, plan, budget, implement, evaluate and report on a socially-innovative project. You will develop as a leader and gain valuable connections and in-demand skills as you kick start your career.
  • Personal growth: With personal leadership coaching you will tap into and enhance your capacities as an individual and leader. You will face and overcome personal and professional challenges, building competencies that will serve you for life.
  • Community engagement: You will learn how to find creative solutions to community priorities and issues. You will connect with other change-makers and develop new professional and personal networks.
  • Successful candidates will receive up to $50,000 in funding

Eligibility

  • Applicants must be McGill graduating, full-time students who will complete their final course requirements within this year's eligibility window (i.e., AFTER last year's Fellowship start date and BEFORE this year's Fellowship start date. Pathy operates on a June-to-June cycle to check annual program start dates, please see the program schedule).
    • Eligibility is based on your end of studies date, not on your convocation date.
    • If you have already finished your studies (before the current cohort's program date) you are not eligible to apply. If you complete your final course work after the start date of this year's program, you are eligible to apply for next year's cycle. In this case, you are encouraged to fill out an Expression of Interest on the Pathy website.
  • Applicants must be permanent residents, or Canadian citizens, under the age of 30.

Questions?

For more information, please contact amelia.slone [at] mcgill.ca (Amelia Slone).

Recent Fellows

2026

Mikal Nazarani

Mikal Nazarani; B.A. Anthropology, Double Minor in International Development and South Asian Studies

Community: Youth in Parc-Extension, Montreal

Initiative Title: Worlds Within Words: A Parc-Ex Storytelling Initiative

Focus: Youth literacy, storytelling and creative expression, mentorship and tutoring, diaspora community engagement

About the Initiative

Mikal’s initiative builds on his work with Jugaar Popups through the organization Brique par Brique, where he developed strong relationships rooted in shared diasporic community. Through this experience, he helped shape the program into a space grounded in reciprocity and co-creation. During his Fellowship year, Mikal will lead a free storytelling and literacy program for youth in Parc-Extension. The initiative combines academic tutoring with creative workshops focused on poetry, oral storytelling, and multimodal expression. By centering creativity and cultural expression, the program aims to nurture narrative confidence, strengthen literacy skills, and empower youth to share their stories and perspectives.

Quotes from Mikal

“I applied to the Pathy Fellowship because I felt it offered a rare structure where community-rooted ideas are tested, supported, and sustained through mentorship and participation. It maintains accountability while honoring local knowledge, community, and impact.”

“My university trajectory was not linear. Eventually landing on Anthropology and South Asian Studies toward the end of my second year, I was taught to take stories seriously - as archives of memory, power, and identity. At the same time, my work with Jugaar Popups, Montreal Serai, and student publications grounded that theory in practice through writing with community. In many ways, this fellowship feels like a convergence of these different threads of community, storytelling, and responsibility.”

Maimouna Mbengue

Maimouna Mbengue; M.Sc. Public Health

Community: Pregnant and postpartum women in the outskirts of Dakar, Senegal

Initiative Title: Fadj Ak Yeurmande - Healing With Compassion: Senegal Postpartum Depression Prevention

Focus: Maternal mental health, postpartum depression awareness, culturally responsive care, women’s peer support, community-based wellness

About the Initiative

Maimouna is developing a community-centered initiative to prevent and address postpartum depression among women in peri-urban Dakar. Through culturally grounded Mother Wellness Circles, the program creates safe, supportive spaces where women can gather, share their lived experiences, and support one another free from judgment and silence. The initiative integrates peer support with culturally responsive mental health services, ensuring women have access to care that reflects their realities and needs. Rooted in principles of cultural safety, it aims to reduce stigma and foster connection in communities where mental health challenges are often unspoken. Born and raised in Dakar, this initiative is Maimouna’s way of showing up for the women who shaped her life by creating spaces where they can be supported in the same way they have long supported others.

Quotes from Maimouna

“The Pathy Fellowship will allow me to turn my vision into reality through the resources it offers: the training, the skills, the mentorship, and the funding. Beyond the initiative itself, it is a profound professional development opportunity, with every element of the Fellowship contributing to developing me into a true changemaker. From building connections with people who share similar values and aspirations, to gaining the project management skills I have always wanted to develop, this fellowship feels like the right place to grow into the leader this work deserves.”

“My Public Health degree gave me the tools to understand the determinants of health and the principles of health promotion and to see how deeply interconnected they are. I learned how to conduct situational assessments, which taught me to approach a problem rigorously before proposing solutions: understanding its root causes, mapping resources, and centering the voices of those most affected. My journey through university also allowed me to develop skills in program planning which gave me the foundation to design my initiative with intention and to believe it can be sustained beyond the fellowship year.
Perhaps most importantly, my degree challenged me to examine power. I learned community empowerment approaches, decolonized frameworks, and equity-centered practices that push back against systems that have historically excluded the most vulnerable. It taught me to check my privilege before entering any space, to show up with humility, cultural competency, and a genuine commitment to putting the community in the lead.”