International interns contribute to AC research project for at-risk youth
Posted on Thursday, November 20th, 2025
Two international youth are interning at the Algonquin College Ottawa Campus through the Fall 2025 Term. Te-Jung Tsai and Tzu-Ming Lin are part of the Taiwanese Ministry of Education’s Taiwan Global Pathfinders Initiative, which encourages Taiwanese youth to work abroad, exchange ideas and build cross-cultural connections with the international community.
(L-R): Te-Jung Tsai, Tzu-Ming Lin, Maria Montano (full-time research associate), Jed Looker, Danny Nhu (full-time research associate, TASTE team lead)
While at the College, Tsai and Lin are interning at the Human-Centred Design Lab under Principal Investigator Jed Looker, working on a community-based research project to address the challenge faced by Ottawa youth not in employment, education or training (NEET). In collaboration with Kevin Holmes in the Social Innovation Lab, the two-year project, titled Supporting Vulnerable Youth: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Service Transformation in NEET (TASTE), is funded by the Embark Student Foundation Grant in partnership with the Rideau-Rockcliffe Community Research Centre and aims to build pathways to post-secondary education by identifying the challenges faced by at-risk youth. Tsai holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering, a master’s degree in industrial design and has spent several years involved in Indigenous youth education projects. She felt this project aligned well with her background and the issues she cares about. “It’s really interesting to see a design lab leading a youth-focused project,” she said. “This gives me a chance to see how design and youth education are approached in another cultural environment, and I also get the opportunity to learn about local Indigenous Nations and their cultures.”
As a licensed social worker in Taiwan, Lin provides counseling and mental health services for post-secondary students in Taipei. He, along with other young Taiwanese people, is taking part in the initiative to “go abroad and have more interaction with international methods, then bring them back to Taiwan.”
The TASTE project will progress over three phases. In the first phase, team leads collect data from subject matter experts and organizations that work with at-risk youth. The second phase will see the project team hire 12 NEET (collaborative) youth to co-design six workshops and activities, which serve to identify the barriers they and their peers face when pursuing post-secondary education. The third phase will focus on delivering strategies for overcoming these barriers via a service design blueprint, knowledge sharing with partner organizations, as well as an evaluation.
Currently in the second phase, Tsai, Lin and the project team are working on hiring the 12 collaborative youth as identified by community partner organizations. The youth will be considered Algonquin College employees while they are engaged with the TASTE project, giving them professional work experience. The project team and the youth will then design and deliver six workshops with their peers in their local community. The goal is to have between 10 to 15 participants per workshop, with the collaborative youth pairing up to lead the discussions and activities. By using this methodology, the project is directly involving NEET youth to design solutions to the complex issues they face in their everyday lives. The outcomes will give the project team two layers of data – one from the 12 collaborative youth and the other from the workshop participants. The workshops are expected to take place over the Winter 2026 Term.
Tsai and Lin are presently working with the project team to recruit the 12 collaborative youth. They expect this to be complete before concluding their internship at the College at the end of the fall term.
Syncing human-centred design with community services is one of the key takeaways Lin will take back with him when he returns to Taiwan in mid-December. He says the Global Pathways Initiative has been a valuable opportunity to learn about different fields and how they relate back to social work.
“I think the experience here provides new perspectives when I think about service transformation – not only people’s needs, but also how we can decide the process, use different tools and use different viewpoints to think about the different systems in the service,” said Lin. “For me, I think that’s the biggest learning in this program… it’s a valuable opportunity to know more about how [Canadian] community centres work and what can be brought back to Taiwan.”
Tsai explained that the TASTE project’s process emerged from the unique combination of perspectives within the team. Each member approached human-centred design differently, which naturally shaped the solutions and methods they developed together.
“It is so interesting to see how different people give out their ideas, method and tools… but if I work with other people, maybe it would be another solution,” she said. “At the CanUX conference and other events, I noticed how actively people reconnect and build relationships. You often see familiar faces across different sessions, and conversations start very naturally. I rarely attended events like this before, so experiencing this kind of networking environment has been very interesting for me. It’s inspiring to see how naturally people support and encourage each other through these connections.”
Learn more about the interdisciplinary applied research projects at the Algonquin College Human-Centred Design Lab.