From refugees to healthcare heroes: how Canada’s Economic Mobility Pathways Pilot is transforming lives
Through innovative programs like the Economic Mobility Pathways Pilot (EMPP), Canada is providing a lifeline to skilled refugees, while addressing crucial labour shortages at the same time By Soo-Jung Kim in Ottawa, Canada “Beginning from my academic journey, I was...
How a Montreal church and a refugee advocate built a model of inclusion
Having just arrived in the Montréal borough of Anjou, Adedeji “Ade” Sunday Akintayo took a long, cold journey across the city to reach an unfamiliar place. But on that October day in 2017, he found a community in Beaconsfield United Church that would change his life...
Open doors, open hearts: what you need to know about shelters for asylum-seekers in Canada
In the last few weeks, we have heard a lot about asylum-seekers in Toronto sleeping on the streets while a public debate rages about who foots the bill. Sadly, the people suffering the most are those left without a roof over their heads. The truth is that housing for...
Award-winning artist K’naan releases new song honouring refugees
In his first new recording for more than a decade, singer-songwriter who fled Mogadishu as a child says he wanted the song to feel ‘like a home for those of us made homeless by conflict’ By UNHCR Staff Canadian-Somali artist K’naan, whose unofficial World Cup...
Fighting for her dreams: female Afghan judoka builds a new life in Canada
By Levon Sevunts | 19 June 2023 Nigara Shaheen was only an infant when her parents were forced to flee Afghanistan to escape a ravaging civil war in 1994. In complete secrecy, they trekked through dangerous mountain backroads before reaching safety in neighbouring...
Alphonso Davies: A New Hope
Farhan Devji writes the biography of Canada’s rising soccer star, Alphonso Davies, born to Liberian parents in a refugee camp in Ghana. By Rohan Stritch | 28 April 2023 A Vancouver-based author has penned the first biography of Canadian soccer megastar and UNHCR...
Love letter to Yemen
My dear Yemen, I cannot believe it has been eight years. My heart is filled with many emotions as I think about all that you have endured. The past years have been marked by unbearable pain, devastating loss, and unspeakable horrors. Yet, even in the face of such...
Helga Loevinsohn, a 98-year-old survivor of Nazi Germany, gifts her compensation from the German government to uplift young refugees
At 98 years old, Helga shares her experience of becoming a refugee, first escaping Germany to find safety in England and later settling in Canada By Rohan Stritch Together with the support of her sons, Helga has decided to gift the compensation she’s received from the...