Survivor Experts, Survivor Voices

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

During conflict and instability, women are often victims of torture and other horrific forms of harm. They remain vulnerable to abuse in flight, in camps, and in urban refugee settings. They are often afraid to report sexual violence because of shame or fear of being ostracized by their families, which leaves them at even greater risk. Almost 1 in 3 women globally have been abu ...

Tomorrow, 18 December, is International Migrants Day, a day designed to encourage us to think about the challenges and difficulties of international migration. This year’s theme – It Takes a Community – seeks to remind us of our interdependence, our common humanity and the special and unique contributions we make to our shared communities. Whilst I think that term ‘migrant’ is ...