Nadia Hassan, 28

Hey, I’m Nadia! Social worker, community organizer, basketball enthusiast, and firm believer that a proper cup of shaah can fix almost anything. Not everything — I’m a social worker, I know the difference — but almost.

I’m Somali-Canadian, born in Mogadishu and raised in Ottawa since I was six. My family settled here in the early 2000s, and this city raised me. My hooyo — my mom — is the strongest person I know: she learned English from scratch, worked two jobs, and still had dinner on the table every night and advice for the entire neighbourhood. My dad drives a taxi and knows every street in this city better than any GPS. I have three brothers, all younger, all taller than me now, which is rude, and all convinced they’re funnier than me. They’re not. Okay, the youngest might be.

I’m a social worker with a community organization here in Ottawa, and this work is my heart. I work mostly with newcomer families — helping them navigate housing, schools, the million forms that come with starting over in a new country. Last spring, I helped a single mom from Somalia — newly arrived, three kids, no English — get her family into stable housing and her kids enrolled in school with proper support. Six months later she brought me sambuus she made herself and told me her daughter wants to be a social worker “like Auntie Nadia.” I cried in my car for ten minutes. That’s the job. Those ten minutes in the car are the job.

Community organizing is my other life. I help run youth programs — homework clubs, mentorship circles, basketball nights — because I know exactly what it’s like to be the kid caught between two cultures, translating for your parents at the doctor’s office at age nine. Our youth nights are loud and joyful: Somali aunties bringing food, kids arguing about basketball, somebody’s little brother asleep on a pile of coats. It’s chaotic and it’s perfect.

And then there’s basketball. I play in a women’s rec league twice a week, and I am aggressively competitive about it. I’m a point guard — short, fast, and extremely annoying to defend, according to my teammates, who mean it as a compliment. I think. My brothers and I grew up playing at the courts near our old apartment, and those games were wars — elbows, trash talk in two languages, and my hooyo yelling at all of us to come inside for dinner. I still play pickup with them sometimes, and I still win. Don’t let them tell you otherwise.

The shaah deserves its own moment. Shaah — Somali spiced tea, black tea brewed strong with cardamom, cinnamon, cloves — is not just a drink, it’s an event. My hooyo makes it every afternoon, and the whole ritual — the brewing, the pouring, the sitting together — is how our family processes everything. Good news, bad news, gossip, big decisions: all of it happens over shaah. I’ve converted all my non-Somali friends; my best friend now makes it herself and texts me photos like a proud student.

Ottawa life for me: morning runs along the Rideau River, community events on weekends, basketball under the lights in summer. I love this city’s quiet kindness — the way neighbours shovel each other’s driveways, the festivals in the summer, the canal in winter. It’s home in the deepest way.

Ramadan in our house is my favourite time of year — the whole family around the iftar table at sunset, my hooyo’s sambusas disappearing in minutes, and the neighbourhood kids running between houses with plates of food. It reminds me every year what community actually means.

What am I looking for? Someone with a big heart and a bigger sense of purpose — you don’t have to do my work, but you have to respect it and the people in it. Someone who’ll sit for shaah with my family and actually listen to my hooyo’s stories. Someone who can handle a competitive game of basketball and lose gracefully (or win gracefully — I’m flexible, I’m just not losing). I need kindness, integrity, and humour — the kind of person who’s good to waiters and good to their mother. If you show up, genuinely show up, for the people you love… we’ll get along just fine.