Reaching Canada is often presented as the happy ending.
For Dacious Richardson, Ebrahim Al-Yousefi, Ajlin Mehmedi and Hamoudi Saleh Baratta, it was not the end of the story.
It was the beginning of another one.
One found connection through sport and now creates that opportunity for young people. One turned gratitude into daily action. One saw years of family expertise go unrecognized and now draws on her own experience to guide others. One found a new direction for a dream interrupted by war.
In a four-part series created by The Newcomers Podcast in collaboration with ISSofBC, host Dozie Anyaegbunam explores what happened after each person reached safety.
The conversations are honest. Starting again involved loneliness, interrupted education, unrecognized experience and years of searching for belonging.
But these stories are not only about what was lost.
They are about what each person carried forward—and what Canada gained.
Together, the four episodes share one clear message:
Refugees are good for Canada.
A ball became a shared language
Dacious Richardson
Dacious Richardson came to Canada from Liberia as a refugee in 2011.
He had grown up during civil war and carried those experiences with him long after reaching safety. In Canada, he filled his days with soccer, wrestling, school activities and community involvement.
Sport gave Dacious a place to use his energy and connect with others. It also gave him a shared language before he had the words to explain everything he had lived through.
“I may go to a country where I don’t know the language, but as long as we have a ball, we’re going to play.”
Today, Dacious is a youth mentor, community leader and founder of Rise Above Reality Expectation Community Services Society. Through sport, mentorship and leadership development, he creates spaces where young people can connect, grow and find direction.
The community Dacious found through sport is now the community he works to create for others.
His story does not suggest that every difficult experience disappears. Instead, Dacious speaks honestly about carrying those experiences while continuing to bring care and opportunity into the lives of young people.
Dacious shows us that belonging can begin before people speak the same language.
🎧 Listen to Dacious Richardson’s episode:
E163: Dacious Richardson on the choices he’s made after landing in Canada as a refugee
Dacious found a place to belong and chose to create that feeling for others.
Ebrahim’s story takes that idea from a different perspective: what happens when welcome becomes something a person wants to pass on?
Gratitude became something to practise
Ebrahim Al-Yousefi
Ebrahim Al-Yousefi’s journey took him from conflict in Yemen through Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Egypt before he reached Canada.
Ebrahim was raised to believe that support should move in both directions: when someone invests in you, you find a way to invest in others.
After arriving in Canada, Ebrahim received services and opportunities from people he had never met before. He was grateful, but gratitude alone did not feel sufficient. He wanted to put that gratitude into action.
An opportunity to volunteer with ISSofBC gave him a place to begin. That experience later led to a communications role, where Ebrahim now shares newcomer stories and connects people with programs, resources and opportunities.
Education became another part of his journey. Ebrahim received scholarships worth approximately $300,000. Members of the Abbotsford community later created a scholarship fund in recognition of his journey and contributions.
His story shows how one opportunity can grow beyond one person.
A community welcomes a newcomer. That newcomer volunteers. The volunteer begins supporting others. The community recognizes that contribution and creates a new opportunity for someone else.
For Ebrahim, gratitude is not only something a person feels.
It is something a person practises.
🎧 Listen to Ebrahim Al-Yousefi’s episode:
E164: Ebrahim Al-Yousefi is giving back to Canada, every day
Ebrahim’s story shows what can happen when a person’s potential is recognized.
Ajlin’s story asks us to consider the other side of that possibility: What does Canada lose when newcomer knowledge and experience are overlooked?
The talent Canada left unused
Ajlin Mehmedi
Ajlin Mehmedi arrived in Canada as a government-assisted refugee after fleeing the former Yugoslavia in her early twenties.
Her family did not arrive as blank slates.
Ajlin’s father was an obstetrician-gynaecologist with more than 30 years of experience, published work and involvement in a project with Columbia University. Her mother was a dermatovenerologist.
Neither practised medicine in Canada.
Their experience points to a wider challenge. Newcomers may cross a border carrying years of education, professional knowledge and experience, yet still be treated as though their lives began on the day they arrived.
Ajlin says newcomers are not only displaced people. They are also managers, parents, leaders, scholars, academics and professionals.
Her own journey took an unexpected direction.
Ajlin first came to ISSofBC as a client. She later volunteered and worked in several roles. Today, she manages settlement services in Vancouver, supporting newcomers through many of the same systems she once had to learn.
“I refuse to let displacement or being a refugee define me for who I am. Instead, I use my lived experience as a unique strength.”
Belonging did not happen immediately for Ajlin. For three years, she was unsure where she fit or what her future would hold.
Then, on a late spring day, something changed. While walking home, Ajlin looked at the sky and the surrounding scenery and realized that she was happy to be there.
Vancouver had begun to feel like home.
Ajlin now uses that lived experience to build bridges for others. Her family’s story shows what Canada loses when newcomer talent goes unrecognized. Her work shows what becomes possible when lived experience is valued as knowledge.
Canada does not lack talent.
Much of that talent is already here.
🎧 Listen to Ajlin Mehmedi’s episode:
E166: Ajlin Mehmedi on the immigrant talent Canada doesn’t use
Ajlin’s family carried knowledge across a border, even when Canadian systems did not fully recognize it.
Hamoudi’s story asks a related question: What happens to a dream when history interrupts it?
The dream changed, but it did not disappear
Hamoudi Saleh Baratta
Before coming to Canada, Hamoudi Saleh Baratta was studying medicine in Syria.
He filmed some of the first footage of the Syrian revolution and was imprisoned and tortured for speaking out. Hamoudi later arrived in Canada alone, with little English and medical studies he had been unable to complete.
From the outside, reaching Canada could have looked like the end of his difficult journey.
Hamoudi describes it differently:
“It wasn’t a honeymoon here in Canada. It was a tough life that I had to start alone with no language, with no friends.”
Arrival was not the conclusion.
It was the beginning of another demanding journey.
Hamoudi learned English, returned to university and graduated from Simon Fraser University with a degree in Computer Science. His education included biomedical applications, connecting his new path with the future he had once imagined in medicine.
The dream did not disappear. Its form changed.
Hamoudi also chose to speak publicly about what happened to him. Telling the story in his own words allowed him to reclaim its meaning.
“I was able to rewrite my story—to be the owner and author of it, and tell it as I experienced it, not how the perpetrators intended.”
Hamoudi’s story does not pretend that hardship has a simple resolution. It shows what it means to refuse to let one chapter claim the entire story.
As Hamoudi says:
“The central theme of my life is hope.”
🎧 Listen to Hamoudi Saleh Baratta’s episode:
E168: Hamoudi Saleh Baratta refuses to let torture define him
What Canada gained
A soccer ball gave Dacious a way to connect. He now creates that connection for young people.
Community support gave Ebrahim an opportunity. He turned gratitude into action.
Ajlin’s lived experience became knowledge she now uses to guide newcomers and her team.
Hamoudi’s interrupted education found another path, while telling his story allowed him to reclaim its meaning.
Their journeys did not follow straight lines.
That is what connects them.
Each person arrived carrying a life that had already begun: knowledge, education, relationships, values, interests and plans for the future.
Displacement interrupted those lives.
It did not erase them.
Canada did not create their determination, care or ability to contribute. They brought those qualities with them. Safety and opportunity gave those qualities room to take new forms.
This is why refugees must be seen as whole people—not only through the circumstances that forced them to leave.
It is also why refugees are good for Canada.
Refugees strengthen communities through work, education, leadership, volunteering, entrepreneurship, creativity and care. Their experiences offer knowledge that can strengthen the systems and communities around them.
However, refugees should never have to prove their value to deserve safety. Protection is a right, not a reward for future success.
When refugees are welcomed with dignity, their existing knowledge is recognized and they receive fair opportunities to participate, everyone benefits.
We thank Dozie Anyaegbunam and The Newcomers Podcast for creating space for Dacious, Ebrahim, Ajlin and Hamoudi to speak in their own words.
These conversations do not reduce complex lives to simple success stories. They make room for interrupted plans, difficult adjustments, unrecognized talent, renewed purpose and the long process of finding belonging.
Most importantly, they allow each person—not displacement—to remain the author of the story.
👉 Read how refugees Are Good for Canada: World Refugee Day 2026
👉 Learn and share the facts about refugees
👉 Donate to refugee programming or become a volunteer through ISSofBC
👉 Send a message to your MP or sign the Canadian Council for Refugees petition to the Prime Minister
👉 Welcome newcomers in your community.
