Laëtitia Damonsing

International Experience Canada

I am Laëtitia, I’m French Canadian!  

I have done two IEC experiences. One was in France, I lived in Paris. My second experience was in Australia. When I applied for France I didn’t know it was IEC because I had to apply through the French consulate. So I applied through the French collate and I lived there for 2 years. I worked for the Canadian government while abroad, at the embassy in Paris. While I was there, planned to do a trip across the world. 

I did Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Malaysia, and by that point, I thought I didn't know if I'd had enough money to do parts of Africa. I'm running out of money and I knew that as a Canadian that they have working holiday experiences to places like Australia, and I came across IEC, and that's when I realized I used IEC to go to France also!

I lived in Sydney for 5 months and worked at the Canadian Consulate, I have Aussie cousins that live in Melbourne, and Brisbane so I decided to go up to Brisbane. I also did lots of adventuring and worked my way all the way down from Brisbane to Melbourne. 

What are some Travel mishaps you’ve had?

Before moving to France I lived in Brazil. In Portuguese, there is the word coco, and caucau, I was looking for coconut and coconut oil, I asked if they had coco and everyone in the supermarket stopped and started to stare, I thought, “have I said something wrong?”

So I got out my phone and showed them a picture of a coconut. They all started laughing, and said no, no caucau, “OH okay so what is coco?”. 

They said shit.  I thought, “oh my god, no I’m not looking for shit!” haha. 

What have you learnt, and how has travel grown you as a person?

So I think I've always been a pretty confident, individual, even when I was young. I never really struggled with insecurities. I think traveling and living abroad has allowed me to have it to develop a stronger sense of self, you know, trusting myself.  Trust is a huge thing.

Trusting myself, trusting life, trusting the process. I am a lot more confident, and a lot more trusting of myself, knowing that everything will always be okay. Sometimes it gets rough, sometimes it doesn't, but everything will always be okay. And you have to trust that. 

The second thing that I learned a lot is never to doubt the kindness of a stranger.

I think that while you travel and you encounter a lot of, nice people that just want to help you out, sometimes someone wants to scam you to buy, a little souvenir or something, triple the price, but if you trust your instinct and you're very self-aware (which you learn) and you're aware of your surroundings, you'll know if you can trust this person or not.

All of these skills are developed while traveling, trusting your instinct.

Everything will always work out trusting yourself. 

Never doubt the kindness of strangers. 

Why would you recommend IEC?

Some of the advantages are one it's government-led.

So you get the visa authorization and you know for sure that it's authorized by the government.  You're not going through a third party. You're going directly to the person that you want to talk to.

If you do need assistance, I can understand why you would go to a third party or an organization that can support you in doing your application or helping you choose your destination. But that's why IEC have youth ambassadors, we were hired to speak about experiences, the program, the advantages, talk about people's apprehensions before traveling and calming them down. 

When you go through IEC, you have us, as youth ambassadors, we're here to guide you. We all had our own separate experiences.

What has travel taught you about yourself? What have you learned?

I want to make travel experiences and living abroad experiences more accessible and inclusive. I'm Canadian, I'm born in Canada, so I'm very Canadian in my values. But my parents immigrated from Mauritius. So when I told them, “Hey, I'm going to travel the world. I'm going to go live in Brazil. I'm going to go live in France. I'm going to go live in Australia.”  They were like, why would you do that? You're Canadian. You have it all in Canada. Why would you do that? 

They didn't understand that notion of going somewhere else when you have something good. So I think a lot of us, if we grew up in immigrant households are taught, or are discouraged, are you sure you want to do this? You have it good here. Why would you leave? Look at us, look at our journey. We came here, why would you go?

It would be great reaching out to those kids and understanding the mindsets they have been brought up with.

I always had to do everything on my own. I wanted to go to Brazil, I went at 21. I worked part-time while studying, and I took a semester off, to go. I wanted to move to France, the same thing. I had a job. I had to save up money working at the front of the Canadian embassy in France in order to move to Australia and to do this world trip. So my parents never, ever, (not 1 cent) helped me, with buying tickets or helping me out financially. I always had to figure it out. 

Unfortunately, I think travel is a privilege. I would want to make it more inclusive and more accessible to kids from lower-income communities or immigrant communities that are not necessarily Caucasian.

Traveling and giving these experiences, making them more accessible and being more inclusive.

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