Episode Description
In this episode, I'm speaking with Musap Abdelhag, known across Calgary as Moose. He's a first-generation Sudanese-Canadian who grew up here as an immigrant kid, fell into the streets, went back to Sudan in his early twenties, and then moved back to Canada to build support programs for immigrant youth living the version of his story he managed to get out of.
What I love about Moose is he doesn't do the motivational version of the conversation around the problems facing immigrant youth and the support they need.
To paraphrase him, immigrant youth don't need a chocolate bars, they need someone to listen to them and understand what they are dealing with.
Moose and I chat about:
What his organization has learned from working with over 500 immigrant youth across Calgary
How immigrant parents navigating cultural and legal unfamiliarity create the conditions for kids to fall through the cracks
Why TikTok and Snapchat have become the default safe space for immigrant youth, and what that costs them
What he'd say to every immigrant parent listening to this episode
What his mentor told him that changed the direction of his life
Dozie's Notes
A few things that stuck with me as I listened through this week's conversation:
The immigrant sector keeps measuring the adults. However, the kids don't show up in any of the numbers (employment rates, housing placements, language scores) until they show up in the justice system. By then, the damage is already a few years old. We need to do better.
Are we having the wrong argument about social media and the kids? We have somehow build a world where an algorithm with no investment in a child's wellbeing offers them more of what they need than their parents or organizations that exist to serve them. And then we rail at the social media companies when we should also be asking what we've taken away from the lives of kids that ended up making social media so appealing in the first place.
Moose believes the settlement sector is missing a lot of resources around immigrant youth. I think what's he's pointing at is harder to fix than a budget line. For example, the benefits of investing in spaces where youth and kids can exist without being profiled or judged can be hard to show in a funders dashboard. Moose believes this sort of relational and preventative work, the kind that builds trust and belonging over time, has to come first before the career guidance, or any of the other preferred youth programming. I don't know how the sector fixes that without changing what it measures.
Official Links
✅ Connect with Musap (Moose) Abdelhag on LinkedIn
✅ Learn more about Moose's nonprofit, Struggle Is Your Success
✅ Check out his AI implementation shop, OnStack AI Labs
One Ask
If you found this story helpful, please consider sharing it with one Canadian immigrant you know.