Chapter 1: Everyone Deserves to Belong
Sometimes, the most important thing we offer isn’t a service, it’s the certainty that someone won’t have to face hate alone.
Day after day, Maryam, our AHS Coordinator, creates a space where healing can begin. Sometimes the most meaningful support is practical guidance. Other times, it’s the quiet reassurance that someone is willing to stay beside you through the hardest moments.
This year, when a gap in funding forced that support to pause, she described it as standing on th shore watching people struggle in the ocean, wanting desperately to help but without a boat to reach them. By the time funding returned, some people had already slipped beyond our reach. That’s why sustaining this work matters. Hate doesn’t wait, and neither should the support people need to begin healing.
Hear Maryam share, in her own words, what it means to walk alongside someone experiencing hate and why being there, at the right moment, matters.