The Room I Wish I'd Walked Into: X Helping Hands Association’s Journey of Resilience

In the fall of 2021, I landed in Canada as an international student from India, carrying three suitcases and a quiet fear that I might not belong here. To manage my finances and support my studies, I worked part- time at Atlantic Superstore, Tim Hortons, and McDonald’s- and even then, I knew I wanted to give back. I traded everything familiar for the unknown roads of Antigonish in rural Nova Scotia and started building a community from scratch. I didn’t know it yet, but that would become the seed of something much bigger than me.

By 2022, while still a student at St. Francis Xavier University, I started what would become X Helping Hands Association (XHH) as something small and informal- a free storytelling platform where newcomers, BIPOC community members, and equity- deserving groups including Indigenous, African NS, and members of LGBTQIA2S+ communities could simply be heard. No funding, no office, no formal plan. Just a conviction that everyone deserves a place to belong, and that rural Nova Scotia needed spaces built with that belonging in mind.

Four years later, XHH is a federally incorporated nonprofit that has reached over 5,200+ community members across more than 25 cultures, through 11 different programs- every one of them free, and every one of them built by people showing up for their neighbours.

From Small Gatherings to a Room Full of People

Our earliest events in 2025 were intimate- workshops run in partnership with other organizations, teaching us what our community actually needed: not just programming, but presence. That groundwork led to Belonging on the Land: Youth Leadership and Community Day, hosted this February in Antigonish, where Elders Joe and Terry, guided participants on a hike at FireLoch- shared food, real conversations, and even a visit from a very special four- legged guest named Snowy.

Then, this past May, we hosted our biggest invitation yet: Roots & Resilience, a two- day free community gathering in Debert, NS, on the unceded, ancestral territory of the Mi’kma’ki. Close to 20 people traveled from Halifax to Cape Breton to spend a weekend together- almost all of them BIPOC community members, and for most, it was their very first community gathering since arriving in Canada. We wove together a watercolour workshop, a climate resilience session with the Clean Foundation, a beaded pin workshop led by Ojibwe artist Kaitlin Cullen, and a closing circle grounded in reflection, yoga, and meditation.

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“What drives everything we do at X Helping Hands is the belief that belonging is not something you wait to be given- it is something we build together,” I said at the time. “Roots & Resilience was about creating a space where diverse voices aren’t just heard, but celebrated.” One of our participants who joined us from rural Nova Scotia, told us afterward: “The beautiful atmosphere, genuine connections and shared creative moments- it was a very warm, inspiring and refreshing experience. The opportunity to guide a yoga session was especially meaningful for me- it inspired me to continue my path and begin training as a yoga teacher.” Another participant, who had arrived from Germany just a year earlier, put it simply: “I really loved the creative aspect of it and the concept of bringing the community together so people could learn from shared experiences.” And one of the artists who led our beaded pin workshop, said afterward that she was eager to collaborate with us again.

That's the kind of ripple effect I hope for with every event we run- not just a good afternoon, but a small push toward the life someone didn't yet know they wanted.

What ACIC Has Meant to Me

My connection to the Atlantic Council for International Cooperation (ACIC) goes back to 2024, when I served as one of the team leads at ACIC's Global Citizenship Conference- three days at the Tatamagouche Centre with youth from across Atlantic Canada, all wrestling with the same question I was: how do you turn belief into action? I stayed involved, most recently through ACIC’s Re- Imagining Development Gathering this past January, unlearning and re- imagining what “international development” even means alongside people doing that same work all over the world.

Being a part and member of ACIC has connected our very local, grassroots work- one henna session, one cooking class, one land- based hike at a time- to a much bigger picture. It's given me a seat at tables I couldn’t have imagined finding as a scared international student five years ago: being selected out of hundreds of applicants for the Jack.org Youth Voice Council and the Fora Network Youth Advisory Committee, joining the Rostrum Global Initiative’s Leadership Seed Pack as one of 15 people worldwide chosen from hundreds of global applications, and being selected nationally for the Canadian Race Relations Foundation’s Anti- Racist Youth Lab and the Aga Khan Foundation Canada’s Teachers’ Leadership Institute this summers. Each of those doors opened because a community first showed up for me.

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Still Rooted, Still Growing

This fall, I’m making my own transition- from the small community in Antigonish that shaped everything about how I understand belonging, to Halifax, where I’ll begin my Master’s in Mathematics at Dalhousie. I’m bringing the same care for community with me. XHH is only growing alongside me- this next chapter means more rooms, in more places, built the same way the first one was: with lived experience as expertise, and collaboration over competition.

We’ll be back at the Antigonish Art After Dark Festival on September 19 with free henna, and an open door for anyone curious about XHH and how to get involved.

“Volunteerism is what turns a community from a place people live into a place people belong,” I’ve come to believe. “Every program we run- a gathering, a healing circle, or a simple conversation over a meal- exists because someone showed up without being asked twice. That’s what builds trust, especially for newcomers, Indigenous families, and BIPOC youth who haven't always seen themselves reflected in the spaces around them. When people volunteer their time, they’re telling their neighbours: you matter enough for me to show up for you.”

X Helping Hands Association didn't start with a five- year plan. It started with a scared international student who needed to feel like she belonged, and who decided that if that space didn’t exist, she would build it. Every one of those 5,200 people represents someone who, at some point, felt a little less alone because this community existed.

Learn more or get involved: www.xhelpinghands.com | team@xhelpinghands.com

Resilience, for me, has never been about doing it alone. It’s been about building rooms where no one has to.