Women and Girls

Globally, around 1 in 3 women have been subjected to physical and / or sexual abuse at least once in their life. That is an estimated staggering 736 million women.  Many women and girls in Lamp Lifeboat Ladder have also experienced violence, either in the country from which they fled, or during their migration. Our program provides survivors with safe housing, health care, acce ...

We wanted to mark today, World Refugee Day, by sharing some writing and photos on the theme of ancestors and family, from some of the writers in “Tomorrow’s Hope: Modern Creativity Group” Writing Group. Over the next days we will be sharing other samples of this group's writing.  Some of the authors prefer to call the day ‘World Survivor Day’. By Nasrin I found my soul in the d ...

We continue to honor World Refugee Day by sharing writing and photos from writers who are survivors in Lamp Lifeboat Ladder.  By Bibienne My grandmother was a woman - strong, courageous, who raised her daughter alone, who is my mother. It is the same with me. I lived alone with my mother, and I am raising my son alone. Day and night I am always there for him. It's me and my son ...

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 ...

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 ...