Men in heels help refugees Techie with Liberal ties is set to run for mayor

Real Estate Charlie Smith > BY CHARLIE SMITH

Imagine a walkathon in stilettos. It sounds painful, but that’s the point of the Foundation of Hope’s annual Strut Vancouver fundraising stroll.

According to the foundation’s vice president, Chad Wilkinson, the goal is to “walk a mile in somebody else’s shoes”—namely, LGBT people in other countries facing vicious persecution for their sexual orientation and gender expression.

“For them, doing something like wearing a heel could be very dangerous,” Wilkinson told the Georgia Straight by phone. “It could be lethal in some countries.”

By donning heels to benefit groups that serve LGBT refugees, Vancouverites might experience a bit of discomfort, but Wilkinson sees this as a way of acknowledging those who are suffering abroad. This year’s walk from Sunset Beach Park along the seawall takes place on June 9.

“At the same time, the stiletto represents a metaphor for us,” he noted. “Even in our own society, it wasn’t until last year that we actually made it illegal for employers to force women to wear these shoes in the workplace.”

Since its inception in 2014, the Foundation of Hope has distributed more than $150,000 to various organizations serving LGBT refugees across the country. This is mostly thanks to its popular flagship event near English Bay.

“In fact, Inland Refugee Society received a grant from us to assist them with their safe house that they established in Richmond for LGBT housing for newcomers,” Wilkinson said. “That’s one example of housing that we have contributed for.”

He and his friends at the Foundation of Hope are big supporters of the Rainbow Refugee Society, a Vancouver registered charity that works with the federal government to help groups sponsor LGBT refugees. The Rainbow Refugee Society also offers support to LGBT people on student visas, LGBT temporary foreign workers, and LGBT people lacking documentation to be in the country.

“We’ve had folks tell us that they slept on the beach for the first three nights because they didn’t know what to do or where to go,” cofounder and board member Chris Morrissey told the Straight by phone.

One of the Rainbow Refugee Society’s core missions is encouraging people to form a “circle of hope” to sponsor a refugee. These circles of Good Samaritans raise money, complete application forms, create a settlement plan, communicate with the person prior to their arrival, and offer encouragement and emotional support. They also assist the refugee once the person has made it to Canada.

“Some circles are all gay men, some are all lesbians, but we also have mixed circles,” Morrissey says. “We have allies. There is one circle, for example, where all the women are straight and all the men are gay.”

She estimated that about 25 people have been sponsored to come to Vancouver and about 120 to the rest of the country since the program launched in 2011.

However, one of the biggest challenges is ensuring that housing is available to the refugees for 12 months after their arrival. That’s a requirement of sponsorship.

“These days, most people in our circles either have one-bedroom apartments or one-bedroom condos, so it’s impossible for them initially to provide housing for them while they look around and try to figure out where they would like to live,” Morrissey said.

To address this issue, she sought help from Vancouver city councillor Tim Stevenson. He then worked out an arrangement with Mclaren Housing Society to provide two subsidized units in the 100 units of social housing that will be built on top of the new Qmunity centre slated for the corner of Burrard and Davie streets.

“Upon arrival, refugees will have temporary one-year housing while sponsors look for permanent housing,” Stevenson announced at a May 17 LGBT breakfast in downtown Vancouver. “It means we can guarantee immediate housing for refugees when they escape queerhating countries.”

For Morrissey, Stevenson’s work will not only help alleviate the housing crunch for LGBT refugees but will also put them in close contact with Qmunity. This can help these LGBT newcomers make an easier transition to living in Canada.

As this week’s Georgia Straight was about to be distributed, it looked like another candidate might enter the crowded race to become the next mayor of Vancouver.

In a media advisory, tech entrepreneur Taleeb Noormohamed was scheduled to make an announcement on May 23 “regarding the Vision Vancouver” nomination.

“He will deliver a message of inclusion and the great potential of Vancouver to a diverse group of supporters, at a public event at Steamworks in Gastown,” the advisory stated.

Noormohamed is no greenhorn in the field of electoral politics. In 2011, he ran as a federal Liberal in North Vancouver, losing to Andrew Saxton of the Conservative Party. As a 27-year-old, Noormohamed challenged Hedy Fry, the longest-serving female member of the House of Commons, for the nomination of the Liberal Party in Vancouver Centre in 2004. Fry prevailed and went on to win a fourth term.

Noormohamed was born in Ottawa to Ismaili Muslim parents who immigrated from Kenya. The family moved to the North Shore when he was a young boy and he attended the elite St. George’s School in Vancouver as a high-school student. Noormohamed then went to Princeton University on a scholarship to study international relations, and he was also on a scholarship when he did doctoral work in geography at Oxford University.

More than a decade ago, he worked closely with former Liberal leader Bob Rae on a federal review of the bombing of Air India Flight 182 over the Irish Sea in 1985. He was involved in organizing the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. As vice president of strategy and partnership for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, he handled files related to revenue, government and international relations, and client services.

More recently, Noormohamed has been chief growth officer of Farfetch, a retail startup. He was also a vice president of global business development with Homeaway, a vacation-rentals marketplace that was later acquired by Expedia.com, and he was also president and CEO of Serebra Learning Corporation, which was also purchased by another company.

Noormohamed did not return messages from the Straight by deadline. The only other declared candidate for a Vision Vancouver mayoral nomination is Squamish hereditary chief Ian Campbell. Party members will choose their mayoral candidate on June 24.

In the meantime, there are three candidates battling for the NPA mayoral nomination, which will be decided on June 3. NPA park commissioner John Coupar is competing against entrepreneur Ken Sim and anticorruption crusader Glen Chernen. Sim and Chernen have never been elected to any public office before.

Other candidates in the race include Provancouver’s David Chen, NDP MP Kennedy Stewart, and SFU publicpractice professor Shauna Sylvester.