Dr Shafi Bhuiyan is pictured here with a team of ITMDs. Foreign-trained doctors are underutilized in Canada despite shortages of trained personnel.

By Shafi Bhuiyan and team of ITMDs
Toronto, Canada, Aug 20 2021 (IPS)

Canada is ranked number one out of 78 countries globally, with the highest marks in social purpose indicators, emphasizing human rights, social justice, and racial equity commitment, according to a recent U.S. News & World Report survey.

The country follows the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) principles, incorporating them into research and workplace environments, and it acknowledges challenges vulnerable populations face. Adopting these principles in every aspect of people’s lives makes Canada one of the most attractive places for numerous immigrants worldwide, with more than 13 000 internationally trained medical doctors (ITMDs) calling Canada home.

Canada’s health care is based on social equity fundamentals, having universal health coverage for essential medical services free of charge. Nevertheless, in 2019, about 4.6 million Canadians claimed that they do not have regular medical practitioners to seek advice or help.

In 2020, the highest record of 10.5 weeks waiting time from a family physician referral to specialist consultation was documented, with additional 12.1 weeks interval before treatment was initiated.

The COVID-19 pandemic aggravated these issues resulting in about 16 million healthcare services backlogs in Ontario alone. These will need up to almost two years to be resolved.

At the same time, Canada possesses significantly underutilized skilled healthcare professional resources trained abroad. According to the survey conducted among recent ITMDs graduates, 35% have passed the required licensing exams, including Medical Council of Canada Qualifying Examination Part I (MCCQE1), the National Assessment Collaboration Objective Structured Clinical Examination (NAC OSCE). This means they are eligible to enter the residency.

Very few will secure a residency position. The residency quotes retrieved from the Canadian Resident Matching Service (CaRMS) website showed that only 325 out of 3,365 (less than 10 %) spots were available for international medical graduates (IMGs) for the first iteration of the 2021 matching process.

Out of 1,358 IMGs participants, 948 (almost 70%) were unmatched this year partly due to a lack of transparency and understanding of the process rules.

Not to mention the cost associated with licensing examination, the CaRMS application process is a significant financial burden and even a barrier in many cases for the newcomers. According to Statistics Canada report, 47% of foreign-educated health professionals are either unemployed or employed in non-health-related positions that required only a high school diploma.

Nevertheless, internationally trained medical doctors play a significant role in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, supporting the vaccination clinics, working as contact tracing managers and mental health advisors.

Another issue that needs an urgent solution is physician wellbeing. A recent study in Vancouver showed that the burnout rate reaches 68% among doctors, with 63% feeling emotionally exhausted and 39% depersonalized. Moreover, 21% of them had resigned or have thoughts about leaving their career.

On top of that, the aging population required complex care, along with a growing diverse population of Canada, underserved racialized, and newcomers’ communities need a considerate strategy to encompass community-based, culturally sensitive approaches to health care.

The ITMDs is a culturally diverse group with rich experience in different fields of medicine and research. Thus, foreign-educated health care professionals are fit perfectly to engage underprivileged communities, promote health and disease prevention, and manage multiple health priorities. Hence, the integration of internationally trained health care professionals could be a turning point to solve the current and prospective issues.

Moreover, 80% of Canadians stated that they feel comfortable being cared for by doctors who obtained mainly their training outside Canada, with 83% claimed that it should be more action to ensure fairness and opportunities for IMGs to practice medicine.

The question is: Why are internationally trained medical doctors still sidelined? The action is for the government to bring Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) principles into the Canadian health care system.

Thus, a clear roadmap to integrate internationally trained healthcare professionals is necessary to address all existing challenges and strengthen Canada’s health care system. A move considered to be highly beneficial for all stakeholders (patients, physicians, ITMDs, government).

Collaboration is vital to move forward and make the ‘no one left behind ‘strategy a reality.

• The authors are from Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and South American countries.   
• The co-authors are: Drs Bhuiyan S, Krivova A, Orin M, Azam S., Shalaby Y, Tasnim N, Badran H, Al-Chetachi W, Radwan E, Tazrin T, Biswas M, Min K. S, Mehrotra M, Anuradha, Quintanilla E, Begum N, Adhikary I, Fatima N

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Panama City, one of the fastest growing metropolises in Latin America. The Third United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) will be held in Quito in October and will adopt the New Urban Agenda. Credit: Emilo Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Jun 30 2016 (IPS)

The declaration that will be presented for approval at the Third United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) in October has again sparked conflict between the opposing positions taken by the industrial North and the developing South.

The aim of the conference, to be held in Quito, Ecuador from October 17-20,  is to reinvigorate the global commitment to sustainable urban development with a “New Urban Agenda,” the outcome strategy of Habitat III.

Developing countries want the declaration to include the right to the city, financing for  the New Urban Agenda that will be agreed at the meeting, and restructuring of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) to implement the agreed commitments. “Long term goals must be put in place that will generate management indicators that can be measured by governments and civil society. Experience related to the social production of habitat should be taken into account, (like that of) people living in informal settlements who have built cities with their capabilities and skills.” - Juan Duhalde

Another bloc, headed by the United States, Japan and the countries of the European Union, is striving to minimise these issues.

In the view of representatives of civil society organisations, these issues should be incorporated into the “Quito Declaration on Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements for All,” the draft of which is currently being debated by member states in a several rounds of preparatory meetings.

Juan Duhalde, head of the Social Research Centre at Un Techo para mi País (A Roof for my Country), a Santiago-based international non governmental organisation, told IPS that these are “key” issues and must be included as part of the discussion and be reflected in a concrete action plan.

“They are the general guidelines that will inform national public policies. The only way forward is for these commitments to be translated into long term agreements for the future. Right now discussions are mainly political and may fall short when it comes to bringing about the progress that is required,” said Duhalde.

The Chilean researcher stressed that “the right to the city goes hand in hand with achieving a paradigm shift away from the present situation, which is biased in favour of profitability for an elite rather than collective welfare for all.”

Stark North-South differences were plainly to be seen at the first round of informal intergovernmental talks held May 16-20 in New York. They will continue to fuel the debate at further informal sessions, the first of which will last three days and is due to end on Friday, July 1.

In the run-up to Habitat III, to be hosted by Quito in October, Ecuador and France are co-chairing the preliminary negotiations. The Philippines and Mexico are acting as co- facilitators.

Brazil, Chile, Ecuador and Mexico lead a bloc promoting the right to the city. Together with defined mechanisms to follow up the declaration, funding for the New Urban Agenda and implementation measures, the right to the city is major irritant at the talks. Among implementation measures is the creation of a fund to strengthen capabilities in developing countries.

The right to the city, a term coined by French philosopher Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991) in his 1968 book of the same title, refers to a number of simultaneously exercised rights of urban dwellers, such as the rights to food and housing, migration, health and education, a healthy environment, public spaces, political participation and non discrimination.

Household possessions dumped on the pavement: a family was evicted from the historic centre of Mexico City. The United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) will address the right to the city and the problems faced by people living in informal settlements. Credit: Courtesy of Emilio Godoy

Lorena Zárate, head of the non governmental Habitat International Coalition (HIC) which has regional headquarters in Mexico City, advocates the inclusion of social production of habitat in the declaration. However, it is not explicitly mentioned in the draft declaration.

“We want it to be included, as otherwise it would mean turning a blind eye to half or one-third of what has been constructed in the world. But there is little room to negotiate new additions, because they are afraid of acknowledgeing them, and consensuses have to be built,” said the Argentine-born Zárate, who is participating in the New York meetings.

The concept recognises all those processes that lead to the creation of habitable spaces, urban components and housing, carried out as the initiatives of self-builders and other not-for-profit social agents.

The most recent version of the draft declaration, dated June 18, bases its vision “on the concept of “cities for all” recognises that in some some countries this is “understood as the Right to the City, seeking to ensure that all inhabitants, of present and future generations, are able to inhabit, use, and produce just, inclusive, accessible and sustainable cities, which exist as a common good essential to quality of life.”

States party to the declaration emphasise “the need to carry out the follow-up and review of the New Urban Agenda in order to ensure its effective and timely implementation and progressive impact, as well as its inclusiveness, legitimacy and accountability.”

Moreover they stress the importance of strengthening the Agenda and its monitoring process, and invite the U.N. General Assembly to “guarantee stable, adequate and reliable financial resources, and enhance the capability of developing nations” for designing, planning and implementing and sustainably managing urban and other settlements.

They also request that UN-Habitat prepare a periodic progress report on the implementation of the New Urban Agenda, to provide quantitative and qualitative analysis of the progress achieved.

The process of report preparation should incorporate the views of national, sub-national and local governments, as well as the United Nations System, including regional commissions, stakeholders from multilateral organizations, civil society, the private sector, communities, and other groups and non-state actors, the draft declaration says.

A building being renovated in Havana, Cuba. Developing countries want the Third United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development to provide the necessary funding to promote the New Urban Agenda, to be adopted by UN-Habitat. Credit: Courtesy of Emilio Godoy

The outline of the draft declaration report has section headings on sustainable and inclusive urban prosperity and opportunities for all; sustainable urban development for social inclusion and the eradication of poverty; environmentally sound and resilient urban development; planning and managing urban spatial development; means of implementation and review.

“It’s (like) a soap opera saga. Right now we are trying to contribute ideas to strengthen the proposal for the right to the city. In the draft, this issue is diluted out; we do not want it to be further diluted,” a Latin American official participating in the negotiations told IPS.

“The United States and China do not want the text to contain references to human rights,” the official added, speaking on condition of anonymity.

It is expected that the draft declaration will be finalised at the meeting of the Habitat III preparatory committee (PrepCom3) to be held July 25-27 in Indonesia, and be presented for approval by U.N. member states at the full Habitat III conference in Quito.

To avoid a repetition of the sequels to the 1976 Vancouver Habitat I conference and the 1996 Habitat II conference in Istanbul, which were not evaluated afterwards, Duhalde and Zárate both wish to see a comprehensive review and follow-up programme established.

“Long term goals must be included and management indicators must be created that can be measured by governments and social actors. The experience in social production of habitat acquired by people living in informal settlements who have built cities with their capabilities and skills must be taken into account,” said Duhalde.

“We are keen to see the generation of evidence and promotion of research into real problems on the ground, in order to generate practical solutions,” he said.

In Zárate’s view, progress cannot be made in debating a new agenda without having evaluated fulfillment of the previous programme goals.

“There must be a means of discerning what is new and what is still ongoing, what has been successfully done and what has not been achieved, why some things were done and why some were not, and what actors have been involved. There have never been clear mechanisms for review monitoring nor for prioritisation,” she said.

“We are adamant that this should not happen again. But they are not going to include goals or indicators, and there is not much clarity about review and monitoring mechanisms,” she said.

The Latin American official consulted by IPS downplayed the likely achievements of the summit. “Habitat III will only be a reference point. There will be no major changes overnight after October 21. National governments will do whatever they intend to do, with their own resources, their own political and social forces, and their own governance,” he predicted.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez. Translated by Valerie Dee.

There has been robust growth in Internet access and usage over the past few years and Africa is now primed to take advantage of the social and economic opportunities that Internet can bring to people across the continent, according to Kathy Brown, President and CEO of the Internet Society.

Speaking at the Africa Internet Summit (AIS) being held in the Tunisian capital from Jun. 2 to 5, Brown highlighted the progress made in recent years to bring improved Internet access and availability to more people in Africa, noting how this growth has provided a strong foundation for stimulating opportunity through an enabling environment defined by inclusion, innovation and entrepreneurship.

“Africa’s recent economic growth rates and growing entrepreneurial spirit are combining to create a climate of opportunity,” said Brown.

“Advances in Internet infrastructure and the meteoric rise of the mobile Internet have already transformed the African technology landscape. I believe that Africa’s Internet is now at a tipping point, poised for further positive change and expansion as the continent looks forward with confidence to the future.”

However, she noted that there are still barriers which must be overcome in order to capture the full economic and social promise of the Internet. While connectivity is on the rise and available bandwidth in Africa has increased significantly, challenges for the African Internet business ecosystem still include factors such as the cost of broadband, online fraud, lack of local content and fragmented markets.

“Africa is now the frontier for the next wave of Internet progress,” said Brown. “While there is huge potential for Africa to continue building an Internet that will best serve its needs and its people, it is critical that true collaboration across Africa’s technical community, a culture of innovation and a spirit of entrepreneurship form part of this process.

The Internet Society stands with Africa to continue the great momentum under way to overcome challenges and enable the economic and social possibilities that only a truly open, trusted Internet can deliver.”

The Internet Society is an international, non-profit organisation founded in 1992 to provide leadership in Internet-related standards, education and policy.

Edited by Phil Harris   

Children having a daily lunch meal at a kindergarten in a poor community in Salvador, Bahia. Brazil's National School Feeding Programme is an example of one of the far-reaching programmes implemented in line with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Credit: Carolina Montenegro/WFP

By Daniel Balaban
BRASILIA, Jan 29 2015 (IPS)

With the current Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) expiring at the end of this year to be replaced by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which will set priorities for the next fifteen years, 2015 will be a crucial year for the future of global development.

As a country with an outstanding performance in reaching the MDGs, Brazil can play an important role in shaping and achieving the SDGs.

Extensive consultations with governments and civil society have been held in recent years, and consensus around many issues has been established and channelled into a series of documents that will now guide the final deliberations on the exact content of the SDGs. September 2015 has been set as deadline for their endorsement by U.N. member states.

Daniel Balaban, Director of WFP’s Centre of Excellence against Hunger. Credit: Carolina Montenegro/WFP

A Working Group has identified 17 goals encompassing issues such as poverty, hunger, education, climate change and access to justice. While some of these topics were already covered by the MDG framework, there is a new set of goals with emphasis on the preservation of natural resources and more sustainable living conditions, meant to reverse contemporary trends of overuse of resources and destruction of ecosystems.

As governments quickly move to adopt the SDGs, they must capitalise on what has been achieved with the MDGs to secure new targets that will go beyond the lowest common denominator.

Brazil has a compelling track record in achieving the current MDGs, and it can use its experience to influence the final negotiations of the SDGs towards ambitious targets.

The country has already reached four of the eight targets – eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality and combating HIV – and it is likely to achieve the remaining targets by the end of the MDG deadline.“As governments quickly move to adopt the SDGs, they must capitalise on what has been achieved with the MDGs to secure new targets that will go beyond the lowest common denominator”

Through a set of innovative and coordinated policies, Brazil has tackled these different areas and demonstrated that it is possible to radically decrease poverty and hunger within a decade, giving special attention to the most vulnerable groups.

The National School Feeding Programme, for example, is one of the far-reaching programmes implemented so far. In 2009, the existing policy was upgraded to recognise school feeding as a right, whereby all students of public schools are entitled to adequate and healthy meals, prepared by nutritionists and in accordance with local traditions.

At least 30 percent of the food used to prepare these meals must be procured from local producers, with incentives to the purchase of organic produce.

The programme also devotes additional resources to schools with students of traditional populations, often exposed to food insecurity.

Another feature of the policy is the participation of civil society through local school feeding councils, which oversee the implementation of the programme, as well as financial reports produced by municipalities.

Altogether, the programme tackles a wide range of issues, combining action to combat hunger, ensure adequate nutrition (including of the most vulnerable groups), support local farmers and involve civil society, in line with principles of inclusion, equity and sustainability, which are also guiding principles of the future SDGs.

It is a good example of how the incorporation of innovative features to existing policies can result in more inclusion and sustainability while optimising resources.

As it occupies a more prominent role on the world stage, Brazil has been active in promoting such policies in multilateral fora, in addition to investing in South-South cooperation to assist countries to achieve similar advances.

The WFP Centre of Excellence against Hunger is the result of such engagement. In the past three years, the Centre been supporting over 30 countries to learn from the Brazilian experience in combating hunger and poverty.

Brazil is now in a position to showcase tangible initiatives during the SDGs negotiations to prove that through strong political commitment it is possible to build programmes with impact on a range of areas.

Such multi-sectorial action and articulation will be required if countries around the globe are determined to tackle humanity’s most urgent needs related to hunger, adequate living standards for excluded populations, and development, while reversing the trend of climate change and unsustainable use of natural resources.

The world is at a crossroads for ensuring sustainability. If the right choices are not made now, future generations will pay the price. However daunting the task may be, this is the moment to do it.

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

* Daniel Balaban, an economist, is the Director of World Food Programme’s (WFP) Centre of Excellence against Hunger. He has also led the Brazilian national school feeding programme as President of the National Fund for Education Development (FNDE), which feeds 47 million children in school each year. In 2003, he served as the Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Council of Economic and Social Development under the Presidency of the Federative Republic of Brazil.

Excerpt:

Young inclusion leaders participating in a workshop session to discuss the setting up of a diversity and inclusion network for future leaders from among Germany’s ‘people of color’, Berlin 2014. Credit: Ina Meling/Integration Commissioner Büro Tempelhof-Schöneberg

By Francesca Dziadek
BERLIN, Dec 23 2014 (IPS)

A unique initiative – the Network Inclusion Leaders (NILE) project – has just held its second workshop here to set up a diversity and inclusion network for future leaders from among Germany’s ‘people of color’, or persons from different ‘non-white’ cultural backgrounds.

The event was held from Dec. 9 to 13in Berlin’s Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy delivered his iconic “Ich bin ein Berliner” freedom and solidarity speech to 400,000 West Berliners in 1963.

The workshop brought together 15 talented game changers aged between 18 and 28 from Afro-German, Turkish, Kurdish, Latin American and German-Asian backgrounds, selected from across the country to engage with illustrious key speakers from Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom in sessions designed to discuss instruments for promoting anti-racism, diversity and migrant-friendly agendas."Democracy needs strong, well-networked minorities. When you look around Germany, from parliament to media, public and private sectors, well it's still pretty white, there's a lot of work to be done" – Gabriele Gün Tank, Commissioner for Integration in Berlin Tempelhof-Schöneberg and co-founder of Network Inclusion Leaders (NILE)

The speakers  included Simon Woolley, Director of Operation Black Vote (UK), Mekonnen Mesghena, Director of Migration and Diversity at Berlin’s Heinrich-Böll Foundation, Kwesi Aikins, Policy Officer at the Centre for Migration and Social Affairs, Nuran Yigit, expert in anti-discrimination and board member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Migration Council, Terri Givens, Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin and a specialist in the politics of race, and Professor Kurt Barling, a BBC special correspondent.

NILE is the brainchild of two alumni of the 2013 German Marshall Fund’s (GMF) Transatlantic Inclusion Leaders Network (TILN) – 35-year-old Gabriele Gün Tank, Commissioner for Integration in Berlin Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and 28-year-old researcher and social activist Daniel Gyamerah, head of Each One Teach One (EATO), a black literature and media project in Berlin.

“Democracy needs strong, well-networked minorities. When you look around Germany, from parliament to media, public and private sectors, well it’s still pretty white, there’s a lot of work to be done,” Tank told a GMF alumni reception.

NILE was set up through collaboration with NGOs, top institutions including federal ministries and assistance from the influential Heinrich-Böll Foundation which is affiliated with the Green Party, the U.S. embassy and the Eberhard-Schultz-Stiftung (Foundation for Human Rights and Participation).  

“We are moving forward with inclusive governance, inclusion best practices and empowerment training,” said Tank.  “This is of critical importance if we are to bridge the migration gap for a fairer, social and political representation of minorities at all levels.”

Engaging young Muslims within a climate of hostility

Mersiha Hadziabdic, aged 25, said that she joined the NILE initiative confident that networking and coalition building plays a crucial role in steering change relevant to her generation.

Born in Sarajevo, Bosnia, she came to Berlin as a three-year-old refugee when her family fled the Prijedor massacre, one of the worse war crimes along with the Srebrenica genocide perpetrated by the Serbian political and military leadership’s ethnic-cleansing drive, which killed 14,000 civilians.

“My background means a lot to me, and for this reason I am involved with the Bosnian community in Berlin, my home town,” she told IPS.

Wearing a headscarf in Berlin, Mersiha is often mistaken for a Turkish woman, with its attendant stereotypes of submissiveness and low expectations.

But, like 25-year-old Soufeina Hamed, a Tunisian-born graduate in intercultural psychology from the University of Osnabrück, who is active in Zahnräder Netzwerker, an incubator for Muslim social entrepreneurship, Mersiha is an internet savvy and project team member of JUMA (Young Active and Muslim), which offers management, rhetoric and media skills training to young German Muslims.

”I see myself as part and process of this vibrant, committed and capable Muslim youth which has something important to contribute and wants to be involved in the conversation,” she said.

Just like Ozan Keskinkilic, an MA student in international relations from a Turkish-Arab background who is active in the Muslim-Jewish Conference (MJC) for peaceful inter-religious dialogue, she noted that this conversation involves engaging in a climate of anti-migrant and refugee hostility.

That hostility is currently finding expression in populist rallies, such as the Dresden march on Dec. 8, where 15,000 anti-immigrant protesters, mostly from PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West), marched to the former 1989 freedom rallying cry of “Wir Sind das Volk” (We are the People).

Young, talented and ambitious, Mersiha, Soufeina and Ozan are part of Germany’s four million Muslims residents and citizens, about five percent of the country’s population, of whom 45 percent have German citizenship.

According to the Verfassungsschutz, Germany’s intelligence agency, approximately 250,000 Muslims live in Berlin, 73 percent of whom are of Turkish background and one-third of whom have German citizenship. They belong to that population sector whose qualifications and skills are raising inclusion and access expectations which demand more level playing fields.

Creating a critical mass for change

The NILE initiative aims to channel personal issues relating to emotional damage inflicted by racism, discrimination or the traumas of fleeing from conflict zones into a process of empowerment towards common, personal and professional goals.

Empowerment and leadership tools are taught as means of engaging with the world as it is, gaining an understanding that ‘persons of color’ are neither powerless nor invisible.

Kurt Barling, who has carved a role of influence for himself by exposing stories which shape communities but too often remain hidden by a majority oblivious to the perspectives of others, had a clear mentoring message:

Group photo of participants in the Network Inclusion Leaders (NILE) 2014 workshop held in Berlin’s Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy delivered his iconic “Ich bin ein Berliner” freedom and solidarity speech to 400,000 West Berliners in 1963. Credit: Ina Meling/Integration Commissioner Büro Tempelhof-Schöneberg

“Take control, shape your narratives with the new digital space available and build trust relationships with the authorities to change how the media frames and reflects our communities and our issues.”

Participants learned to be part of a critical mass for change, a “majority complex”, to build strategic coalitions to reduce marginalisation, reframe the migration debate as a socio-economic asset, and challenge discrimination and racism with the tools provided by human rights instruments such as the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), a monitoring body of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD).

“Freedom of speech definitely stops at racial slander and incitement,” explained Kwesi Aikins, “and you can challenge that in the courts. Even human rights education is a human right.”

“Martin Luther King did not just have a dream, he had a plan,” said Simon Woolley of Operation Black Vote (UK). Woolley was invited by NILE to explain to the young participants how they can take advantage of the torch handed to them all the way back from the civil rights movement, including harnessing their own electoral muscle because the black vote counts. “The bottom line,” he said, “is that power talks to power”.

NILE workshop participants agreed that the challenge facing young leaders is to find their role within the constraints of conflicting choices on offer between blending, assertiveness and the tiring fight for a fair share.

Maria-Jose Munoz a native of Bolivia, whose research interests focus on the Madera river energy complex on the Bolivia-Brazil border, knows she has an uphill struggle ahead of her – emerging in a white, male-dominated energy policy field.

Wrapping up her experience at NILE, she said: “We are all just looking for belonging and a way to engage in a personal and public dialogue, building bridges between our often conflicting identities.”

“As minority communities, we often find a blocked path towards common goals. NILE helped me understand that I can be strong and that, by coalescing with others, I can tear down these walls.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)