Blog

Playwright and activist Catherine Filloux has written a fantastic artist spotlight about Amin Al-Badra, who is a writer, visual artist and participant in Lamp Lifeboat Ladder.  The piece has been published in Brandeis University's Peacebuilding in the Arts newsletter! Catherine works with and facilitates the Tomorrow's Hope: Modern Creativity writing group comprising survivors ...

Today is International Women’s Day, the theme of which this year is ’Embrace Equity’. Several women wanted to share their thoughts about the day and about the power of women and girls with messages to their sisters around the world which we will be sharing in several blog posts! Alham, a young woman from Syria, now in Ontario wrote: “Where do you find the strength?” “We’re wom ...

Fati, a young Afghan-Iranian woman who is now is living in Toronto, said this: ‘I believe that women have changed the world, at least they have changed my world. I was drying up like a plant. They shined on my life like the sun and helped me to grow.’ Thege, a woman now living in Alberta writes this: THE WOMAN 👩 The woman is a being of the female gender. In previous times, she ...

Razan, a woman from Syria is now living in New York State wrote this piece: Challenge game with me: How can we be fair in our feelings towards life? This life taught me a lot, and actually it still does. Its lessons were so hard; not merciful, and…not easy. It didn’t have mercy on my weakness as a woman, or my loneliness as an immigrant and my tears as a loser. I don’t know, I ...

Many women survivors in our program are fighting for the rights of their fellow countrywomen and girls who continue to experience extreme repression and violence, simply because of their gender.  This violence is never far from survivors’ minds. Two women in our program have written beautiful pieces describing their devastation at the approach towards women and girls in their h ...

In June 2022, Lamp Lifeboat Ladder began a writing group for survivors in the program. The aim of the group is to provide a dedicated space for survivors to learn new, or enhance their existing, writing skills and creative talents and build a community of survivor writers. It is also meant to provide an alternative to the norm of survivors often being only seen as one dimension ...

The Lamp Lifeboat running team continues to go from strength to strength! Together, the team of 15 runners has run more than a dozen races across the world this year.  This Saturday 10 December - Human Rights Day - 10 members of the team in Canada ran a 10K race and then on Sunday they ran the Santa Shuffle race in Toronto dressed up in Santa outfits! Even though it was 14 degr ...

Many of the women and girls in our Lamp Lifeboat Ladder program have experienced violence, either in the country from which they fled, or on their migration journey. We provide them with safe shelter, health care, access to psychological and other social support and community, as well as securing for them legal pathways to protection.   We stand in solidarity with all women and ...

The Lamp Lifeboat Ladder running team is still going strong, with numerous races being run in the past few months, including 4 team members completing a half marathon in September!!  Jayne, our international program director, along with Abdo and his two brothers, completed a half marathon running along the beautiful lake Simcoe in Georgina, Canada on September 11.   Abdo, who r ...

Fabiola is a talented writer and survivor living in Greece and is part of Lamp Lifeboat Ladder. Fabiola wrote a piece called "Refugees in Greece: LOL," recently published in Migratory Birds. In it, she talks about the discrimination confronting people seeking safety in Europe, particularly Greece, and the long-term mental health impact this will have. Fabiola highlights the mos ...