DIVERSEcity Skills Training Centre’s Dean Lin is up for a Top 25 Canadian Immigrant Award
Finalists for the 2023 Top 25 Canadian Immigrant Awards have been announced, and DIVERSEcity’s own Dean Lin is among the Top 75!
Let’s vote to help him get one of the Top 25 spots. Voting is open until June 9, 2023 here.
Voting is limited to once per email address. Each voter may select up to three candidates. Other finalists include Toronto Argonauts football player Henoc Muamba, SFU’s Sobhana Jaya-Madhavan and many more inspiring immigrants from across Canada.
Here’s a little background on Dean and why he was nominated!
Taiwan-born Dean Lin, MBA, has found a way to use his business expertise to support his passion in helping newcomers and the underemployed to find the resources they need to thrive in Canada. After a varied career in logistics and international development work with Colleges and Institutes Canada, Lin now runs a social enterprise in Surrey, B.C. called DIVERSEcity Skills Training Centre. It offers affordable, short-term computer and customer service training that prepares people to enter or re-enter the labour market.
The Buy Social-certified social enterprise uses its profits back to support the charitable work of DIVERSEcity Community Resources Society.
When the pandemic hit, Lin recognized that DIVERSEcity Skills Training Centre and its in-person classes were at a crossroads. Instead of shutting things down temporarily, he grew and expanded the centre by pivoting to offer online courses. This opened the centre up to a whole new base of learners from across the province. Today, courses are offered both in person in Surrey, online, as well as at partner sites around B.C., primarily WorkBC locations, other non-profit agencies and even Indigenous communities. He credits collaboration and relationship building with the centre’s partners for its exponential growth over the last few years, in addition to the curriculum’s focus on accessibility and the needs of individual learners, many of whom have multiple barriers.
Leading this social enterprise is just one part of Lin’s busy schedule. He is an entrepreneur, community builder and volunteer. He not only manages residential properties for his family business, but runs a rental website for landlords and renters in Hope, B.C., where he lives part time. As a board member of the Hope Business and Development Society (a.k.a. AdvantageHope), he helps promote growth and investment into the beautiful but small community, with the goal of making it more welcoming to business, immigrants and younger residents.
He is also on the board of a small non-profit in Metro Vancouver that focuses on welcoming newcomers and encouraging self-development. There you’ll often see him leading a yoga class or book club discussion, and making sure that everyone feels welcomed and included.
When he visits his homeland of Taiwan, he also takes the time there to volunteer and support local groups with English translation and providing information to would-be immigrants who are looking to come to Canada.