Monday June 17, 2019
By Kashmala Fida
Aliyah Gauri of Nisa Homes is photographed on the University of Alberta campus in Edmonton. The organization is planning on building a transitional shelter for Muslim women in Edmonton. CODIE MCLACHLAN/STAR EDMONTON
EDMONTON—Washrooms without bidets, a lack of halal food options, soiled prayer mats and the presence of men were just some of the complaints Aliyah Gauri heard from Muslim women seeking shelter in Edmonton.
Gauri is the project manager for Nisa Homes — transitional homes for Muslim, immigrant and refugee women and children who are seeking shelter after fleeing domestic violence. Nisa Homes operates four shelters across Canada; in Mississauga, Ont., Surrey, B.C., Windsor, Ont., and Calgary. The homes shelter anywhere between eight to 12 women at a time.
This fall, Nisa successfully raised $100,000 to open a shelter in Edmonton.
“In terms of why we came here, we were getting calls from here,” Gauri said, adding that there had even been times when people were so uncomfortable with their shelter options in Edmonton, they travelled to other cities to find help.
According to a Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics report released in February 2017, there has been a two per cent increase in family violence in Alberta since 2014. Out of all Canadian provinces, Alberta currently ranks third highest for its rate of intimate partner violence.
Although research on issues related to domestic violence in immigrant communities remains limited, the conversation has been shifting in recent years. Not only are shelters now specifically collecting data on the number of immigrant women coming in, but tools and resources available are also being directed to cater to the needs of immigrant women.
In April last year, the Alberta Council for Women’s Shelters (ACWS) introduced a revised version of the danger-assessment tool, first created by a researcher from Johns Hopkins University in 1986. The tool is a questionnaire to assess whether women are at risk of being killed by their intimate partners.
The revised version is aimed at immigrant communities, with questions in their languages that focus on the experience of immigrant women. Edmonton law enforcement, medical staff and immigrant and LGBTQ serving agencies were trained on how to assess the danger levels of immigrant women in an abusive relationship.
Nisa Homes was started in Mississauga, Ont., by the National Zakat Foundation, a non-profit organization that collects donations from Muslims and gives to other Muslims in need. Zakat refers to charity in Arabic and is one of the Pillars of Islam. Nisa means woman in Arabic.
Yasmine Youssef, national manager of Nisa Homes, said the foundation kept getting applications from Muslim women repeatedly fleeing domestic abuse at home. The foundation conducted an extensive study to see if there was a need for a transitional home that could better serve Muslim women.
“What they found was that a lot of women are not stepping forward because they are afraid of stigmas, they are afraid of Islamophobia ... so they either prefer to stay in those abusive relationships or end up staying with friends or family or couchsurfing,” Youssef said.
With Islamophobia on the rise in the country — a 2018 Statistics Canada report showed that 2017 saw a sharp increase in hate crimes, up 47 per cent over the previous year — women were fearful of putting themselves in another vulnerable situation.
She said the study they conducted found that many women who had gone to shelters often had bad experiences, usually at the hands of other residents. Women would report hearing comments like “Doesn’t your religion say that a man can hit his wife?” having their hijabs pulled, and even having someone defile their prayer mats.
The first shelter opened in 2015 in Mississauga, followed by the one in Surrey the same year.
The shelters have since seen an increase in the number of women attending, as well as an increase in the number of phone calls for help, Women reach out via phone-call for any number of reasons, from searching for a safe space to stay, to advice on what to do at home if abuse occurs. The first year the shelter in Mississauga housed 43 women. Last year they housed 201. This year to date, they have already housed 101 women.
The number of calls for help the organization gets nationally has been rising, too. Nisa received 127 calls in 2016. Last year, they received 657.
Youssef noted that the rising number of Muslim women seeking shelter at Nisa Homes is not due to a rise in domestic abuse, but rather more awareness around the issue and an increase in available resources.
“Obviously, when we started off, not many people knew about us. With time, we became more well known and we heard from a lot of women ... that ,‘the only reason we came is that we knew that you would cater to my cultural and religious needs,’ ” she said.
Three main Edmonton shelters — Win House, WINGS of Providence and Lurana Shelter — have seen an increase in the number of immigrant women using their services. From 100 in 2014 to 133 in 2017, according to the Alberta Council of Women’s Shelters. That number has decreased slightly in 2018, down to 112.
The percentage of immigrant women going to shelters in Edmonton is higher than the provincial average. In Alberta, on average 11 per cent of women admitted to shelters are immigrant women, whereas in Edmonton 15 to 20 per cent are immigrant women.
Kirsty Hagan, family support manager at Carol’s House, an Edmonton women’s shelter that specifically caters to immigrant women, said raising awareness about available shelters has encouraged more women to come in.
“We are seeing more immigrant women coming in, even through our other shelters that aren’t specifically for immigrant women,” she said.
Women from Edmonton started reaching out to Nisa Homes in 2016. In 2018, they received a total of seven calls from women in Edmonton who had heard of them. This year, they have already received seven calls to date.
“As we are not even halfway through the year, we anticipate more calls, so this is an increase since last year,” Gauri said.
As the city’s population increases, so too does the number of immigrant women and children, which is why Gauri said it was important to bring Nisa homes to Edmonton. She conducted an assessment of need for the city and what she heard here echoed the experiences of women in Ontario.
“I know there has been an instance with a woman getting her prayer mat and someone peed on it,” she said.
She said language is also a huge barrier for many Muslim women. The majority of Muslim women in Edmonton peak Urdu, Arabic and Somali. “These are their primary languages, they never really had to master the English language,” Gauri said.
Through fundraising, they have enough money to open a shelter, but Gauri said they will continue to fundraise for operating costs.
Kashmala Fida is an Edmonton-based reporter covering City Hall and diversity. Follow her on Twitter: @KashFida