In these difficult times, Rivers of Hope would like to thank teachers and education workers from the bottom of our hearts.

Rivers of Hope is pleased to announce that we have received a 3-year, $85,000-per-year grant from Ontario Trillium Foundation’s Youth Opportunities Fund to challenge racism and Islamophobia in schools.

Content Warning: This essay contains discussions and specific examples of spiritual abuse, sexual abuse, and domestic violence

Sidrah Ahmad is a writer and researcher based in Toronto, Ontario. She co-founded the Rivers of Hope Toolkit for survivors of Islamophobic violence. Her writing for mainstream media and academic research has helped to bring the reality of gendered Islamophobic violence into public discourse in Canada.

Her research on this subject has now been published in the Journal of Gender-Based Violence.

You can follow Sidrah on Twitter here.

For Sexual Assault Awareness Month (#SAAM), let’s raise awareness about Islamophobically-motivated sexual assault, and all forms of sexual violence Muslim women face.