Blog

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 ...

The amazing Abdo has been part of the Lamp Lifeboat Ladder family for more than 5 years. He resettled to Toronto in October 2021 with his parents and siblings. Since arriving he has started interviewing passersby in different parts of Toronto, asking them questions about the city and filming their responses, adding the clips to his YouTube channel 'Abdo Tube'.  He said it's a f ...

Lamp Lifeboat Ladder is a survivor-centered and -led program. We believe survivors are best placed to tell us about their unique needs and we must then tailor our program support to meet these needs.  As part of this approach we want to ensure we communicate with all survivors in our program about Lamp Lifeboat Ladder's philosophy and activities, and encourage feedback and inpu ...

We wanted to mark this day by sharing some beautiful words from Fatemah J, a survivor in our program. She writes about her experience as someone who has been forced to leave the place she grew up in search of safety and how she copes with the pain of the changes in her life she's been forced to confront. Her words describe the lack of control that refugees have over their lives ...

Congratulations to eight members of our Lamp Lifeboat Ladder running team who completed the Dead Sea 10K race in Jordan last week!!!  This was the first official race the team has participated in since the marathon team began and we smashed it!  My name is Saeed, I'm originally from Syria and I am the Lamp Lifeboat Ladder Athletics Director. I ran with our international directo ...

At the beginning of 2022, our director Jayne Fleming teamed up with a survivor in our project to train for a marathon together. They knew it would be tough, but it’s a great goal to focus on, and helps one get fit in the process. They picked the Istanbul Marathon in November 2022 as the race they would aim for. When Jayne shared this plan with team members and other survivors i ...

Today is International Women’s Day. What better way to mark this day than by celebrating an incredible family in our Lamp Lifeboat Ladder project, in particular two inspiring, smart young women, both studying at university, whom I met during my recent trip to Jordan. Ahlam and Angham talked to me about their university studies and their hopes and dreams for the future. Ahlam an ...