The Azadi Project

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Shining the spotlight on mental health and psychosocial support for refugee women

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Helping women unleash their true potential and transform into leaders

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Empowering refugee women to experience the healing power of stories.

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Volunteer. Donate. Partner.

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Azadi Leadership Program

Preparing young leaders of tomorrow. 

In The Media

The Azadi Project’s work with refugee and marginalized women has been covered by media outlets internationally. You can read about it here.

About Azadi

Azadi means FREEDOM in Hindi, Farsi, and Urdu. And at The Azadi Project, this forms the ethos of everything we do.

Our work with refugees centers primarily around women and young children — those most affected by conflict of any kind. Apart from being susceptible to gender-based violence and trafficking, the unseen mental trauma due to forced displacement and separation from loved ones is a global crisis in the making. This is where we try to make a difference.

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How can you help?
Donate

Every $ you donate helps more refugee women access mental health support.

PARTNER

Want to collaborate with us on our global projects?

VOLUNTEER

Want to help us fundraise or create content? We’re always in need of volunteers.

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How can you help?
Donate

Every $ you donate helps more refugee women access mental health support.

VOLUNTEER

Want to help us fundraise or create content? We’re always in need of volunteers.

PARTNER

Want to collaborate with us on our global projects?

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How can you help?
PARTNER

Want to collaborate with us on our global projects?

Donate

Every $ you donate helps more refugee women access mental health support.

VOLUNTEER

Want to help us fundraise or create content? We’re always in need of volunteers.

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image of a lion with text
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It’s important that you as the people who are affected, as the actual refugees , are empowered yourself. I really welcome this initiative started by The Azadi Project .

Melissa Fleming

United Nations Chief Spokesperson

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The Azadi Project’s mission to create a world where refugee and migrant women are empowered is so very close to my heart.

Sheryl Sandberg

(COO) of the social networking company Meta

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When I met with women refugees from Ukraine, they were traumatized by the war and anxious for themselves, their children and about the future.

Jody Williams

Activist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace

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Hear from our women leaders

We love working with a global community of people and organizations. Here’s what some of them have said about us:

“The time I spent with everyone at the session was a very vulnerable moment for me. I reflected on all of that after the session.”

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Upcoming Events

Coming Soon

Upcoming

Please visit our social media platforms for more information on our upcoming events 

Azadi Advantages

Creates strong women leaders and role models

Provides a safe space for participants to offer and seek comfort

Focuses in holistic development through psychosocial support sessions

Sessions are led by trained facilitators

Uses creative tools such as storytelling and art therapy

Participants bond over shared stories

Participants control the narrative, and using their own voice and agency

Fosters a sense of community

Provides training of trainers

Blog

28 October 2022

Fundraiser: Refugee Mental Health

On Mental Health Day, Azadi is making sure that mental health support for refugee and asylum seekers is visible through an expert-led webinar and a special fundraiser.

26 October 2022

“Whatever the country, I can make a life there”

26 October 2022

Masomeh – mother, sister, daughter, and a life-long refugee.

OUR PROGRAM PAGE

Athens, Greece

September 2018

Workshop on digital skills: multimedia storytelling and video production for refugee women

The Azadi Project’s inaugural workshop was held in Athens to provide digital livelihood skills to women refugees. The aim was to provide employability skills along with a safe space for women to share, come together and control their own narrative. The workshop was done in partnership with The Center for Constitutional Studies and Democratic Development (CCSDD) which is a joint collaboration between the School of Law of the University of Bologna and the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna, Italy (SAIS Europe) and the Melissa Network, a network for migrant women in Greece, promoting empowerment, communication and active citizenship.

The first class of Azadi participants were seven extraordinary women from Afghanistan, Iran and Palestine. Each participant had a unique story and passion. They worked during the entire workshop in teams and individually to produce their own video story. Each video is moving and very personal.

The participants acquired skills of scripting, filming, video editing and website designing – a 360-degree multimedia vision. After the workshop, Azadi connected the participants with organizations for internships, advanced professional training and employment opportunities, facilitating their integration. Program participants were trained in best practices for digital content producers. They learnt to engage with video, digital photography, audio recordings, and possess the tools and storytelling skills to produce, edit and post content online across all social media platforms.

Athens, Greece

September 2018

Workshop on multimedia storytelling and community radio for migrants

This workshop was done in collaboration with the International Republican Institute.

Our participants were ten migrant returnees in Niamey. By providing entrepreneurial multimedia and radio storytelling skills to returning migrants and then securing them internships at local radio stations, we helped our participants build their agency to reintegrate and reenter the labor market by using their newly acquired digital expertise. By providing them with skills to tell their own individual stories we also enabled them to to take control of their own narratives and counter the stereotypical narrative of migrants.

Meet Biba Souley, who attended this workshop

She couldn’t go to school but today she is on the radio. Biba Souley, a migrant returnee in Niger says that if there were opportunities and jobs in her country, she would never leave Niger and go to a new country to be treated as a slave. “Why would anyone risk their life if it wasn’t out of dire necessity?”, says Biba, a 35-year-old single mother of five children who made the journey through the Sahara desert to Libya. During Azadi’s digital media workshop, she learned skills such as storytelling, public speaking, radio programming, video and social media to share her personal story of survival. Through sessions of art therapy she learned how to draw strength from her traumatic past and transform it in productive ways. Within a week, Biba was able to share the story of her journey in Libya with confidence on different channels. Ultimately, Biba was invited by a local radio station to air her story and share her experience with community members, further creating awareness about what compels people to migrate and the risks associated with migration.

Athens, Greece

September 2018

Digital storytelling skills and mental health support for women refugee living in the Moria camp

This program was done in collaboration with the International Rescue Committee, Women in Solidarity House (WISH) and was supported by the UNHCR Greece. All women participants of The Azadi Project Workshop in Lesbos had experienced trauma through violence both inside their houses and outside on the streets in war-torn Afghanistan, forcing them to flee their home country. They were being retraumatized because of unsafe living conditions in Moria, Europe’s biggest refugee camp. Through the art of storytelling, photography, yoga and psychosocial support sessions with professional psychologists, the refugee women were taught to channel their fear, depression, anxiety, and hopes into stories they wanted to share with the world. The participants learnt to ideate, script, film and edit their own videos.

All participants from Afghanistan participated in group therapy sessions for resilience building, facilitated by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and individual online counseling sessions with Dr Foojan Zeine, a certified psychotherapist based in Los Angeles.

Moria camp, Lesvos, Greece

March - December 2020

Pandemic Support: providing life-saving hygiene kits and sensitization on covid-hygiene management

As the Covid-19 pandemic raged through the world in 2020, for refugees living in the Moria camp in Greece survival became harder than ever. With most nonprofit organizations and aid agencies forced to shut operations in Moria, refugees were struggling for basic necessities. The Azadi Project partnered with the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and Becky’s Bathhouse to provide refugee families with targeted interventions to protect their health during the pandemic. Over 1,300 refugees were sensitized on covid hygiene management and over 50,000 hygiene products were distributed during the lockdown. The Azadi Project also trained and equipped the team of volunteers for this Covid-19 and menstruation hygiene management campaign in the Moria camp. We adopted an inclusive approach, targeting men and youth to promote gender equity.

Lesvos, Greece

March 2021

Azadi-Lean In circles to provide leadership skills and psychosocial support to women refugees

The Azadi Project, in partnership with LeanIn.Org and with the support of Sheryl Sandberg, Founder of LeanIn.Org and Rachel Thomas, co-founder and CEO of LeanIn.Org, implemented the first Lean In Circles for refugee women on International Women’s Day 2021 in the Moria Refugee Camp in Lesvos. Women from Moria met biweekly for social support and friendship in Azadi’s safe, welcoming space outside the camp. In addition to being able to share their experiences and access the support they need, these women were also provided with essential leadership skills. Azadi-Lean In Circles served as a gateway for women, who needed additional support, to access private, individual counseling with certified remote psychologists.

Pioneering a unique model, the proposed project was the first of its kind to integrate in-person/group, online/individual, and local counseling resources into a seamless process to meet the psychosocial support needs of refugee women.

If you are interested to see the results of our programs in Greece please check this report.

Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh

September 2021

Rohingya refugees awareness building and sensitization on gender-based violence, child marriage and health issues including mental health.

The Azadi Project partnered with Rokeya Foundation in Bangladesh to carry out a storytelling, leadership and psychosocial support program from September 2021 December 2021. Using a Training of Trainers (ToT) model, a total of 100 beneficiaries – 75 Rohingya women and 25 Rohingya men – participated in the program in the Cox’s Bazar refugee camp. The workshop sensitized the participants about gender-based violence, trafficking, child marriage and created women and men leaders within the refugee camp to disseminate this knowledge further. The program was funded by the Nobel Women’s Initiative.

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Yemen, Online workshop

December 2021

Virtual Storytelling Program

The Azadi Project conducted a six-month virtual storytelling program to train members of Peace Track Initiative (PTI), a foundation that aims at localizing and feminizing the peace process through promoting inclusion and enhancing feminist knowledge leadership in the Middle East and North Africa with focus on Yemen. Similar to the Cox’s Bazar program, this follows a ToT (Training of Trainers) model as well. Twelve Yemeni migrant women leaders from PTI were trained in storytelling skills to build knowledge products and multimedia tools for advocacy.They in turn would conduct the training in their communities. Most importantly, the aim was to teach participants to use their stories as an advocacy tool to further women participation in the dialogue for peace process.

New Delhi, India

June 2022

Rohingya refugees awareness building and sensitization on gender-based violence, child marriage and health issues including mental health.

The Azadi Project partnered with Ummid Ki Udan in New Delhi to carry out a storytelling, leadership and psychosocial support program from May 2022 – June 2022. During phase 1, a trained female group facilitator held five sessions for 15 Rohingya refugee women and local community women who currently reside in New Delhi, in Khadar (Κanchan Κunj, Shram Vihar).

The workshop focused on the art of storytelling and its therapeutic benefits, by creating a safe space for the beneficiaries to interact in. Through this, it aimed to sensitize and create awareness about gender-based violence, trafficking, child marriage, women’s health and hygiene issues and create women and men leaders within the refugee camp to disseminate this knowledge further.

Krakow, Poland

June 2022

Psychosocial support program for Ukrainian women refugees

As many Ukrainian women, most of them mothers, fled the war with their children, Poland became one of the neighboring countries to host most refugees from there.Most of them having experienced trauma were in need of psychosocial support. The Azadi Project’s PSS program hosted weekly psychosocial support sessions conducted by a certified Ukrainian therapist in a safe space in the center of Krakow. This was modeled around self-help support groups. The program was based on therapy and coaching techniques and strategies. The facilitators were responsible for fostering discussions among a participant group of no more than 10-12 women.

In this setting, women are free to attend and share stories, anxieties, fears, or struggles with other participants and the facilitators or to just listen to other attendees. With this model participants control the amount of information they share and their narrative. They are also given tools and strategies by our therapist on how to cope with anxiety, unprocessed grief and anger. The program was done in collaboration with the JCC (Jewish Community Center).

Individual therapy was offered to women who were dealing with more severe problems. More detailed information and donation campaign can be found here

In June 2022, we also partnered with the Nobel Women’s Initiative to host three women Nobel laureates in Poland on World Refugee Day to raise awareness about the condition of Ukrainian women refugees and local feminist organizations.

We partnered with Rethinking Refugees to organize and host India’s first-ever event focusing solely on refugee and statelessness issues. The four-day event (December 15-18, 2022) included panel discussions by renowned experts and activists, charity performances, a photo exhibition, and more. The event, ‘Rethinking Refugees – Azadi to co-exist’, was a mix of in-person and online sessions that promoted a holistic understanding of the contemporary refugee situation worldwide and in India.

For more information please refer to the press release (link)

Findings from the Nobel peace laureates’ delegation to Poland and Ukraine 

20-24 June 2022 organized in partnership with the Nobel Women’s Initiative

ABOUT US

It was founded in 2018 by Priyali Sur who, as a journalist, had reported extensively on the emerging refugee situation in the Middle East and Europe since 2015. With seed money from her alma mater School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University, and mentoring support from the Atlantic Council, where she was a Fellow; Azadi conducted its first pilot program providing digital storytelling skills to women refugees in Athens, Greece in September 2018. This was done with the support of Vanessa Davaroukas and Lluis Dalmau, two former SAIS, Johns Hopkins students.

Since its inception in 2018, Azadi has impacted the lives of more than 5,500 refugee women and its programs have benefitted displaced women from Afghanistan, Iraq, Myanmar, Niger, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen. Our beneficiaries emerge as women leaders bringing positive change in their communities as well. Azadi excels at putting a gender lens on the challenges faced by refugee and marginalized women. We have run programs across the global south from Africa to the Middle East and South Asia. Azadi is advised by top international experts with extensive experience in refugee rights, women’s rights, and mental health.

Our Vision

Azadi envisions a world where women from refugee and marginalized communities can access their rights universally: and are not limited by geographical borders, or their race, religion, ethnicity, and/or sexual orientation.

Our Mission

Our mission is to empower refugee, migrant, and marginalized women and girls to unleash their true potential and transform them into community leaders. We do this by providing leadership and livelihood skills along with psychosocial support in safe spaces.

Why we do what we do

The Azadi Project’s aim is to enhance refugee women and girls’ voice and agency by providing leadership and livelihood skills, and psychosocial support to women from refugee and marginalized communities globally.

Our Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) programs offer an outlet for healing from mental trauma while building confidence – all in a safe and judgment-free space.

Our virtual and on-site workshops provide basic spoken English, digital literacy, public speaking, and other soft skills along with sessions on gender equality awareness to prepare them for leadership roles within their communities and a professional career.

Our participants report reduced symptoms of anxiety and depression and a greater sense of well-being that equips them to take on leadership roles. Many of them have also joined Azadi as consultants and volunteers to have a larger, direct impact on their community.

During the COVID pandemic, our public health activities delivered critical supplies and information to over 5,000 refugee women. Since our inception, we have benefitted displaced women from some of the most conflicted-affected countries of Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Myanmar, Niger, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen.

The challenges we face

Refugees — who have experienced horrific traumas in their home countries and migrated through brutal conditions — are often re-traumatized by violence and dire conditions in camps. Women’s trauma is particularly acute due to gender-based violence — including domestic violence, rape by smugglers, trafficking, and sexual assault in prison. Social norms in countries of origin make it difficult for women to request help for anxiety, depression, and PTSD among others. Refugees’ right to mental health services is enshrined in international law. And untreated mental health issues cause irreversible harm that persists across generations, according to UNHCR. Yet despite the huge need for psychosocial support, few are able to access it. Distressed or anxious asylum seekers are more likely to be rejected by immigration officials, with often devastating consequences, such as deportation to life-threatening circumstances in their countries of origin.

Their mental health crisis is exacerbated by a lack of opportunities to sustain themselves. When Sedigeh, an Afghan refugee arrived in Greece as a refugee with her husband and two children, she like most other refugees had to survive on the food packets and the 90 Euros given to them per month by UNHCR. There were no jobs for women like her. She was a refugee woman of color with almost no English language skills. Five years later in Poland– Alina – a single mother and a Ukrainian refugee woman, faced the same problem. Despite a Master’s degree, the only jobs available to her were cleaning jobs. Like Sedigeh and Alina, most migrant and refugee women do not find employment in the skilled sector. Even with the acute labor shortage exacerbated by the COVID pandemic, qualified refugee women are still unable to find jobs.

Systemic barriers that prevent refugee women from accessing paid work can include unfair expectations of caregiving responsibilities, language issues, as well as gender inequality at the workplace. In addition, labor participation of refugee and migrant communities as a whole is low due to intersectional bias and negative stereotyping. When these intersectionalities and biases meet, it becomes that much harder to find skilled jobs and integrate into host communities.

The Azadi approach

Our unique community-based model was created to meet the various challenges faced by women from refugee and marginalized communities.

Run by trained facilitators and therapists, these sessions are conducted in a safe space for refugee and marginalized women to share feelings with others in similar situations.The group sessions de-escalate the women’s emergency mental health situations by providing peer support. The forum helps refugee women deal with trauma; as well as mental health illnesses like depression, anxiety, and PTSD using a range of creative tools including art therapy.

The program builds resilience and confidence to transform women refugees into leaders and agents of change, enabling them to identify solutions to mental health and gender equity issues and implement them in their community.

The component of providing leadership, public-speaking and livelihood skills is designed to provide a holistic learning opportunity to marginalized and refugee women. This trains them to enter the job market and take on leadership roles. Women who represent marginalized and migrant communities, are women of color, or/and survivors of violence are prioritized.

RESOURCES