Safer Room

In today’s episode we spoke with London-based refugee and gender fluid-fashion stylist, Teem Khan. Teem told us about how he first became interested in fashion, what affected his decision to pursue gender fluid fashion, and how he's personally been affected by the UK's ban on asylum seekers getting jobs, which Teem is actively fighting against right now with the Fight the Ban campaign. 

In today’s episode we spoke with the Director of Communications and Public Relations at a non-profit dedicated to ensuring that travel is not a barrier for refugees and immigrants called Miles4Migrants, Annette Ross. Annette told us about how Miles4Migrants began, why their business model has allowed them to collect 45 million donated miles, and she shares stories of refugee families they've reconnected.

In today’s episode we spoke with UNHCR Spokesperson and Communications Officer and the manager of the Instagram page Refugee Diaries with almost 10,000 followers, Bathoul Ahmed. We talk about her path from Sierra Leonean refugee to UNHCR employee, the importance of storytelling in humanitarianism, and some of the biggest misunderstandings that people have about refugees.

In this episode, we spoke with Sara Alavi, US-Pakistani singer, actress, model, and lifelong humanitarian. Sara has been volunteering for UNICEF since high school, and her dad, Dr. Alavi, founded the Peace Worldwide Organization, for which Sara is an ambassador. Sara talks about her experience growing a platform separated from her humanitarianism and then using that to help her inflict positive change, common misconceptions about refugees in the US, and how others can help.

In this episode, we spoke with Anisa Liban, one of the co-founders of the 2015 non-profit Horn of Hope which combatted starvation and illiteracy in Somalia and elsewhere in the horn of Africa, and a senior legislative aide at the Ohio Senate, among many other positions Anisa holds to fight for the rights of various groups. Anisa talks about her journey as a Black Muslim woman in the world of advocacy, non-profits, and politics, and talks about how many ways there are to help people in this new age of advocacy.

In this episode, we spoke with Ifrah Hashi, a hijabi Somali-American model who walked for Nike at New York Fashion Week, is a member of the Good American Good Squad with Khloe Kardashian, and is currently advocating for justice in Minneapolis with the Black Lives Matter movement. Ifrah talks about her decision to wear her hijab more consistently and how that affected her career, misconceptions that many people have about refugees in the US, and how important it was for her to continuously step out of her comfort zone as well as how important it is for non-minorities to amplify the voices of minorities.