Founded by friends, Ywione Darrell and Daniel Osset, Longtail Learning provides free tutoring and mentoring services to Bermuda’s next generation of university students
Ywione Darrell and Daniel Osset, both 21, have had academic and scholarship successes, but they have also endured disappointment. No matter what, they never lost sight of their goals and have viewed every outcome as beneficial life experience.
In order to put their experience to good use, and give back to Bermuda, the two school friends, and Saltus alumni, established a free-of-charge tutoring and university mentoring service, Longtail Learning, in March 2023.
“The way it works is we do our tutoring over the summer and then try to help people apply to university. Then scholarship applications start opening up around January,” explained Mr Osset.
A priority for the scholarship programme is to make them more visible: “We’re trying to tell people there are all these scholarships out there. Most of them are not academic based. Most of them are need based. Also, just apply to them.
“A big part is people saying I’m not going to win, so I shouldn’t apply. But, even if you don’t get the scholarship, you get that connection with a business in Bermuda.”
Sharing his own experience, Mr Osset admitted he didn’t get any of the scholarships he applied for in his first year, but when he applied second time around, he was awarded the AXA XL scholarship: “When I applied second year, all the scholarship committees knew me by name, they recognised me from the year before and I can still reach out to a lot of those people and ask questions. It’s always good to know people in Bermuda.”
Mr Darrell was awarded the AXA XL scholarship first time around. “There’s no hard feelings,” laughed Mr Osset, who has just entered his final year studying Finance at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
Mr Darrell has just completed his Bachelor’s of Science and Political Economy at Kings College, London and is about to begin his Masters of Science in Economics for Development at Oxford University.
Other university students who also formed the founding executive committee of Longtail Learning include wellness officer, Mackenzie-Kohl Tuckett, Madison Smith, who does marketing and outreach, middle school co-ordinator, Gabriella Medeiros and iGCSE coordinator, Skye Oliveira. The university mentoring programme is run by Angel Seaman.
Inspired by the experience of his younger brothers, it was Mr Darrell who first suggested the idea of Longtail Learning: “I went to Paget Primary and I had a lot of support from my Aunt growing up, and so I never really struggled that much in class,” he explained. “But, for my younger brothers, especially my youngest who needed a reading support teacher, my Mum can’t afford that sort of support. For me, that was my driving motivation.
“Whenever I see an issue like that, my immediate thought is not just how can I help out this individual in my family, it’s like, I know there’s other people in that situation and I want to create some sort of structure or institution that can help them through that predicament.”
While mostly ‘staffed’ by fellow university students, Longtail Learning has also received support from the (re)insurance industry. For this year’s tutoring service Lockton Re, Mosaic and Arch Capital either hosted or provided tutors.
The university programme begins with a summer boot camp to get applicants thinking about which university they want to go to, and in the Fall, Longtail Learning mentors studying similar degree subjects help them with the application process. Past mentors have included people studying for degrees in nursing, psychology, political economy, business and finance, English and even someone training to become a commercial pilot:
“That really speaks to the essence of what the programme is about,” said Mr Darrell. “It’s not about funnelling people into one area of Bermuda’s economy. It’s about promoting Bermudians to be the best in their fields, because, if you bring those skills back to the island, that might be the next crucial juncture for us to start a new industry in something.”
Their advice for Bermuda’s students? “Research and apply to as many scholarships as you’re eligible for, or remotely interested in,” said Mr Osset. “For university, look for something that you’re passionate about,” added Mr Darrell.
For more information about Longtail Learning visit https:// longtaillearningbda.weebly. com or follow them on Instagram @longtaillearning
