The intensive training and workshops I did with Amal Mekki on migration and human-interest journalism gave me tools that fundamentally changed the way I work. While I was based in Tunisia covering Libyan and Tunisian affairs, those workshops sharpened my narrative writing and pushed me past surface-level coverage, teaching me to dig into the real heart of a story and its human dimensions. Now, here in Canada, I’m drawing on those same skills as I engage with Indigenous communities, the broader Canadian public, and newcomers alike, exploring questions of land, identity, and shared memory through storytelling that actually resonates. That continuity, I think, is the clearest proof of what that training gave me: the idea that a journalist is, at heart, a cultural bridge carrying people’s stories with them wherever they go.