Coady Profile: Dmitri Nicholson
October 26, 2025 10:59 AM
Dmitri Nicholson, from Guyana, is a Coady participant and recent recipient of the StFX Student Union Scholarship.
Taking a diploma in development leadership, and specializing in advocacy, he feels truly honored to have been given the scholarship, and subsequently the opportunity to be part of the StFX and Coady community.
“This scholarship is one of the special things that happened to me in this program because when I applied, I had no clue how I was going to pay for this,” says Nicholson. “So when the school and the Coady International Institute responded to me and said, ‘We do have a scholarship’, it really did change my whole outlook on being able to participate in the program.”
Without the scholarship, he says that he wouldn’t be able to be here, and the same goes for other Coady students.
“The scholarships that are given to come here is worth more than just the actual training and learning that we’re able to obtain because even just being here for the two months I’ve learned so much that I’ve been able to work with my colleagues back home.
So these scholarships are a critical part. I think it’s a unique flavor that the Coady and StFX has to providing education to people. Many of us wouldn’t be here if we had to find the money on our own.”
The organization that Nicholson works with back in his native Guyana is called Youth Challenge Guyana, which was founded in 1991, and focuses on rural development in remote locations of the country situated by Brazil and Venezuela.
“Our work centers around working with parents, working with youth, working with indigenous communities, looking at HIV/AIDS, and health awareness.”
Additionally, Youth Challenge Guyana does a lot of work in trying to create employment, entrepreneurship, and education among the youth of the communities in which the organization works.
The program, of which Nicholson has been executive director of for the past two and half years, sets up volunteers and teachers in the communities to educate and empower the youth and to teach them about HIV/AIDS and substance abuse, among other issues facing young people in rural Guyana.
“A main part of what I believe is that for people to become empowered you sort of need to give the access to resources and skills for them to learn on their own. A lot of the time, our work is centered around making young people understand and visualize, see who they are, realize their own goals, and give them the space to do that.
I had the space to do that once I started to volunteer, and it eventually helped me in realizing a whole lot of other things. And once you get people that space, you can do a lot of transformation on their own.”
Although the Coady students have only been here for two months, Nicholson claims that the knowledge and information he has learned so far will help further Youth Challenge Guyana and help with his work when he returns home in December.
“With the kind of skills I’m learning through this institution, I think there are lots of other possibilities that I can see unfolding for the organization because even while I’m here, I’ve been working on different kinds projects that should be researched back home.
I think the organization will continue to grow, and our areas of focus as of right now remain education, health, youth, and indigenous people and, as the organization continues to grow, we’ll be able to offer the communities more service and diversifying the services that we offer and this program has really given me a lot of perspective on how to engage with the community more.”