This article is part of a seven-part series celebrating Niagara College’s Alumni of Excellence — the highest honour bestowed upon NC alumni. The series features outstanding graduates who were also nominees for the 2025 Ontario Premier’s Awards. Winnie Muchuba (General Arts & Science – Enhanced Language Training for Employment, 2018) was recognized in the Francophone Outreach category.
Winnie Muchuba’s personal journey and lived experiences have been the driving force behind her passion for helping newcomers settle and feel safe in their communities. The mother of seven, who escaped civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 2013, uses her experience as a refugee to help Francophones and other newcomers access the resources they need to rebuild their lives in Canada.
Muchuba fled the DRC with her six young children following the assassination of her political activist husband. After initially seeking safety in Uganda, where she was later discovered and targeted, she made the painful decision to place her children in an orphanage in Kenya, allowing her to travel alone to Canada and secure refuge for them. Her seventh child was born several months after she arrived.
Despite holding multiple university degrees in international humanitarian law, human rights, rural development and social organization, and economics from the DRC, Muchuba knew that arriving in Canada meant starting over again. She sought volunteer opportunities that drew on her training and lived experience, working on fundraising campaigns for Syrian refugees and for Romero House, the settlement centre where she first lived in Toronto. When she and her children reunited and relocated to Welland in 2016, she discovered that being fluent in French enabled her to work as an interpreter for the local Francophone community.
In 2017, Muchuba completed an Ontario college English Language Training for Employment certificate at NC, strengthening her volunteer work at the Community Health Centre of Welland/Centre de santé communautaire de Welland (HCW/CSCW). There, she continues to serve as an interpreter for clients accessing legal help and other essential services, while also supporting community programming as a volunteer facilitator.
She credits Niagara College’s welcoming and diverse environment for helping her feel supported as she settled into life in Canada. Through the Enhanced Language Training for Employment program, she improved her English skills and gained practical knowledge of Canadian workplace culture, communication, and citizenship. The program’s focus on inclusivity and practical skills helped her quickly adapt and gain confidence.
“The training at Niagara College helped me understand who I am, and who I can become,” she said.
Her humanitarian background and experience living through conflict later led her to volunteer with the Canadian Red Cross (CRC) in 2019. When CRC deployed a crisis team to Kashechewan First Nation in Northern Ontario during a severe COVID-19 outbreak, Muchuba bravely set aside her own trauma and asked to join the mission. Today, she continues to volunteer with CRC as an Emergency Responder Volunteer with the Emergency Response Team in Ottawa, and as a Disaster Management Safety and Wellbeing Responder for the Southwest Ontario region. She also serves on the Board of Directors for Entité2, which advocates for access to French-language health services in the Golden Horseshoe.
Muchuba has spent the past decade giving back to her community, using her bilingualism, cultural knowledge, and humanitarian training to help newcomers navigate life in a new country and overcome language barriers. Deeply empathetic to the isolation and confusion many newcomers face, she has pursued volunteer opportunities wherever she has lived, supporting others in ways she wished had been available when she was rebuilding her own life in Canada. Her work was especially important during the COVID-19 pandemic, when outreach played a key role in infection prevention and community safety.
Muchuba says that her time at NC was one of the first place she felt safe after arriving in Canada.
“What is most important is how I’m giving back to this community that, when I came vulnerable, took me as I am,” she said. “They said, ‘You are safe here.’ That is something I am so grateful for.”
Reflecting on her Alumni of Excellence recognition, Muchuba shared: “This honour means a lot to me as it brings great memories to be grateful and honour back all institutions–Canada, Niagara College, Romero House, Entité2, churches. You held my hand when I could not hold myself together, and it gives me a great sense of achievement in my life.”
