At 21, East York community leader Nebiyou Timotewos received the Ontario Medal for Young Volunteers at Queen’s Park on October 19. Born in Ethiopia and once housed in a Toronto shelter with family, he went on to build Communities Care and Brothers4Brothers, join a TELUS community board, graduate summa cum laude from York and launch MyOccasio. Here is how that record of service took shape.
Nebiyou Timotewos walked into Queen’s Park on Monday, October 19, 2026, to receive the Ontario Medal for Young Volunteers from Lieutenant Governor Edith Dumont. At 21, the East York community leader and entrepreneur joined a select group of young Ontarians recognized with the province’s highest honour for youth volunteer service. The medal capped a year that would fill most people’s résumés for a decade.
In the same twelve months, he graduated summa cum laude from York University, began graduate studies at McGill University as a McCall MacBain Scholar and launched an education technology platform built for Canadian students.
The road to that podium started far from Toronto. Timotewos was born in Hawassa, Ethiopia, and lived through conflict and displacement in Yemen before arriving in Canada at 12. His family then spent seven months in the city’s shelter system while they rebuilt, relying on donated food, clothing and other necessities. He has since turned those months into a working blueprint. His programs deliver the kind of support his family once received and have grown well beyond what any single donation could reach.
A double cohort at Queen’s Park
This month’s ceremony was larger than usual. The province used it to honour both its 2024 and 2025 recipients, 20 young people in total, with Timotewos named among the 2024 class. Each recipient received the medal along with a framed certificate and a lapel pin.
The medal was created in 1998 for Ontarians aged 15 to 24. It recognizes young people whose volunteer work has improved life in their communities and inspired others to serve. An independent advisory council selects the recipients. Before this double cohort, 237 people had received the honour since its creation. When the province announced the recipients in late August, Dumont said she looked forward to meeting “leaders who are helping to strengthen our communities.”
Several other Toronto names shared the stage. Etobicoke’s Lincoln Dugas-Nishisato was recognized for humanitarian work spanning food insecurity, disaster response and refugee support. Victoria Greenwood of Toronto was honoured for bringing dance to remote Indigenous communities. North York’s Camille Chen and Angela Dong were celebrated for mental health education and for supporting adolescents in cancer treatment.
Turning a promise into Communities Care
Communities Care began with a promise Timotewos made while living in the shelter. He kept it in 2024 by launching a hygiene kit drive for unhoused youth. The drive grew into a youth-led organization, and he has since mobilized volunteers to distribute more than 3,700 care kits. York University has reported that the effort reached more than 3,000 young people across Canada and over 300 in Ethiopia, carrying the work back to the country where his story began.
The kits are assembled around everyday needs, the items a young person in transition most often goes without. Contents have included:
- Food and hygiene products
- Menstrual products
- School supplies and backpacks
- Jackets and other seasonal essentials
Brothers4Brothers and the conversation on men’s mental health
Timotewos also founded Brothers4Brothers, a mentorship program that confronts mental health stigma among young men, with a particular focus on Black and racialized youth. Participants move through cohorts built around open conversation about well-being, leadership and personal development. Along the way they form lasting bonds with peers and mentors.
More than 75 young people have graduated from the program, and several have returned as peer mentors. That loop is central to the model. Graduates become guides for the next group, which keeps the program grounded in shared experience.
The program has also tried new formats. In April 2026, Brothers4Brothers partnered with The Climate Collective on The Building Blocks of Us, a reflection circle for men that linked conversations about identity and community to climate and well-being.
A seat where funding decisions get made
His influence extends into philanthropy and international youth leadership. Timotewos is the youngest member of the TELUS Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area Community Board, where he helps review charitable grant applications for youth health, education and community initiatives. York University’s YFile has also identified him as Canada’s sole representative on the Youth Impact Council, a body that supports and scales ideas from emerging changemakers around the world.
Together, his commitments span grassroots service, grantmaking and global advocacy. The main threads look like this.
| Initiative | Role | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| Communities Care | Leader | Care kits and essentials for youth facing hardship |
| Brothers4Brothers | Founder | Men’s mental health and peer mentorship |
| TELUS GTHA Community Board | Youngest member | Reviewing charitable grant applications |
| Youth Impact Council | Canadian representative | Scaling youth-led solutions globally |
| Occasio Technologies Inc. | Founder and CEO | Connecting students with funding and career opportunities |
Summa cum laude, then McGill
The academic record kept pace with the volunteer work. In 2026, Timotewos graduated summa cum laude from York University with an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Global Political Studies. He also completed a minor in Human Rights and Equity Studies and a Professional Certificate in Public Administration and Law.
On campus, he served as a student senator and President’s Ambassador and took part in mentorship, student leadership and equity initiatives. That work earned him York’s Robert J. Tiffin Student Leadership Award and an Outstanding Student Leadership Award. He also interned at York’s Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research, where the Wellness Impact Lab credited him with creating space for conversations on climate, well-being and social connection.
This fall he began a Master of Management in Analytics at McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management. He is one of 30 scholars in the McCall MacBain Scholarships’ 2026 global cohort. The scholarship fully funds graduate education and pairs it with mentorship and leadership development.
MyOccasio and the search for opportunity
Alongside his studies, Timotewos runs Occasio Technologies Inc., the education technology startup he founded and leads as CEO. Its platform, MyOccasio, launched in September 2026. It helps Canadian students find scholarships, bursaries, grants, internships and jobs matched to their profiles and goals.
The platform is built to follow an application from first discovery to final deadline. Its core features include:
- Opportunity matching based on each student’s profile
- Application tracking and deadline management
- Academic planning tools
- AI-powered guidance
Timotewos earned his own fully funded place at McGill through a competitive scholarship. The platform’s focus on access reads as a natural extension of everything else he has built.
Service as a family inheritance
Timotewos has been direct about where the drive comes from. “Canada has been so gracious to me and my family, and I feel a deep sense of duty to continue serving this country and giving back to the communities that have given us so much,” he said ahead of the ceremony. The medal he received at Queen’s Park recognized a large body of work. It includes care kits distributed across Canada and Ethiopia, mentorship circles for young men, grant decisions at a corporate community board and a startup designed to widen the path to opportunity.
By any measure, the honour arrived early. He is 21, enrolled in graduate school and running a company. The organizations he started are already producing leaders of their own, with Brothers4Brothers graduates returning to guide the cohorts behind them. That ripple effect may prove the most lasting measure of his work, and the clearest sign that the medal marks the opening chapter of a much longer story.
