A Thanksgiving dinner for students with no family nearby

The Last Fete started as a Friendsgiving. It grew into a full Thanksgiving dinner, designed to welcome young adults, especially international students without family nearby, into a space that felt like home, and it doubled as a food drive for the Knights Table in Brampton. "The room was full. People felt seen," Tenisha Noel says.

It was the first event of DuoVida Collective and Foundation, which she co-founded with Priya Dharshani Puran and Isabella Iannone. She says "the three of us knew firsthand what it felt like to move through systems that were never designed to celebrate us."

“I've learned that some of the most powerful moments begin as something small: a conversation, an opportunity, a young person finally seeing themselves differently. Give that moment enough care, and it can become magic.”

Tenisha Noel

The motto, she says, is simple: where celebration drives success. The Collective hosts community events and the Foundation delivers free professional development. The Foundation’s events are free.

Tenisha is a Black woman with Grenadian roots. She completed her LL.M. at Osgoode Hall Law School, where her research examined racial profiling and systemic bias in Toronto. She is now pursuing her JD/MBA through Osgoode Hall Law School and the Schulich School of Business at York University. DuoVida exists, she says, because "I refused to accept the false choice between building a career and building a life."

Her research, she says, confirms what she has witnessed on the frontlines: young people, particularly Black youth and those navigating structural exclusion, are short of access and belonging rather than ambition. DuoVida closes that gap, she says, by keeping the Foundation’s events free and every space intentional.

"That is what we are building toward at scale," she says.