As a current student of the University of Westminster in London, England, Tember Cadette is striving for her degree in Digital Business while spearheading her own
non-profit organization in both Saint Lucia and Canada. As a founder of Do Something Different, and an all rounder in youth development, we caught Tember just before she had to leave for the UK and she shared how she started her journey with DSD!
What is it like studying abroad?
I have a love/hate relationship for it. Sometimes it’s very hard to adapt to other people’s culture. I haven’t really found a Caribbean community in the UK as yet and even at school they mix the Caribbean and African communities together despite it being two completely different groups of people.
Since the pandemic, it’s been absolutely horrible having all my classes online and it makes it hard to socialize and meet new people. I might know two people in my course which has around 800 people so it’s been a challenge. I live on campus but I’ve never set foot in a class so I’m hoping that soon we’ll be able to at least go to our smaller classes, in the event that things take a positive turn with the pandemic.
I think I “appreciate the fast life at times” would be more true to myself here.
What is DSD about?
Do Something Different (DSD) is a non-profit organization that focuses on empowering young people, mostly students.
We were throwing names across, just talking about what we wanted to do and how we wanted to do it. We had some horrible names at first, but we decided that if we started small and focused more on the impact we could have through reaching our family and friends, then we could “do something different” and it just clicked. That’s how we got our name, and it stuck.
When we started in 2017, it was Raquel John, Anneka
Thompson, Stefy Defreitas and myself and we noticed that so many of our peers, especially at SALCC were struggling with the basic necessities for school, like books, laptops and things like that. So we got the idea for DSD when we started it was mainly stationary and notebooks. Flash forward four years later which is January 2021 and we were able to donate things like kindles and laptops which was amazing. It showed how much we grew in such little time.
How easy is it to get donations?
It’s never been too hard. Our motto is “Give a little, help a lot” which was why we started with our family and friends in the beginning. They helped with the small things and we did a lot of radio interviews that helped bring in more donations over time. So I’d say it hasn’t been as hard as we expected it to be so we’re grateful.
What do you enjoy about being in DSD?
It’s like a family. We’re really close, and we talk about anything. It’s fun to have people to talk to about certain things and when we get together it’s always good vibes and energy. I love that.
What major challenges have you faced and how have you overcome them?
The biggest challenge up until now has been understanding the nonprofit sector. It operates as a business but then again, it’s not. I think the challenging thing is knowing that when we get donations we have to take pictures and publicise it etcetera but we also don’t want to tarnish anyone’s integrity or make anyone feel uncomfortable so it’s been a little hard balancing the two.
We also deal with a lot of kids, especially children under the age of 16 and when we started we didn’t take into account the fact that we needed to ask for permission, and have written consent to do certain things. So learning through the obstacles we had to face as an organization was a challenge and even now that it’s grown and we’re all at different stages in our lives with our jobs and university and so on, which makes it even more difficult to keep up with these kinds of issues.
Our main focus and one of our main challenges is essentially maintenance and keeping it up to the standard that we want it to be.
Now that you’re a full time student, how do you balance your time and how does the organization adjust to your new commitment?
We have a full executive which is great, and it helps. We try to work together as much as possible and do our best not to overextend ourselves and take on too much. It’s important to know when you’ve done all you can do.
On top of me being at school, I’m also in a completely different country so we’ve had to switch to doing almost everything virtually but it coincided with the pandemic so it wasn’t too much of a huge change. So with our amazing teamwork, we get what we need to get done. And I always believed that it’s better to not do something at all, than to do it and do it poorly, so we don’t bite off more than we can chew.
What is your support like?
My team is amazing. I wouldn’t have reached this far without them. They make it easy. My family’s also been really supportive, especially my mother. I’m grateful for how much she’s helped me out, dropping things off when I needed her to and being amazing about it. So in all, I have the best team, the best mother to support me.
What future plans do you have for DSD?
Right now, our focus is securing devices for donations and being able to reach more people on a larger scale.
We believe devices are essential to students right now, especially those who don’t have access to any sort of computer or smart device. We want to give them to the right people, so we want to do thorough research when it comes to things like tablets and laptops. Sometimes you find people who donate things and it always seems to be the same people who get, so we don’t want to make that same mistake.
Do you plan on growing your team?
I want to say yes, because we’ve expanded to Canada and they’ve been great in assisting with donations so far. We’ve also expanded to Barbados which happened just before the pandemic but we haven’t been able to do much in Barbados as yet but hopefully this year we’ll be able to get back on track.
What did you see yourself doing as a kid?
I always saw myself doing some kind of philanthropic endeavour, or medicine if it came to it but my goal was always to give back. I tapped into volunteerism at SALCC and then I realized it was something I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
And DSD has helped me in more ways than one, including landing me where I am now. I applied for scholarships for a while, and when I got into Westminster I didn’t get the scholarship I needed at the time. I applied twice for the scholarship before I finally got it in 2020 and it’s on the basis of DSD. It’s for international students who have plans to go back home and develop their country which ties in with my advocacy, which is great. DSD has opened a lot of doors, including being an OECS Ambassador, One Young World Ambassador and so much more.
What advice do you have for others who want to do something different?
People always DM me and I usually say the same thing. They’re so many nonprofit organizations and what I wish I knew then, is that partnerships are the way to go. If there’s someone that’s doing something similar, come together if you can and work with them. The more we work together, the more we can get done.
Know your mission, know your goal and look for people who are working in the same direction.
We look forward to hearing more about Tember, Do Something Different and her achievements yet to come! Good luck!
