SafePlace International is a nonprofit organization that provides safe spaces for healing and learning for LGBTQIA+ displaced persons. Throughout its evolution, the organization has sought to address global issues of inequity, beginning with safety. SafePlace Executive Director Rachael LeClear notes that forcibly displaced people and asylum seekers are frequently failed by asylum processes that are meant to assist them.
“We focus on helping those who have experienced some of the most severe marginalization in the world. These are people who end up in limbo for years. The asylum processes are very punishing and really built to not be successful in many places, and people end up in these holding patterns where they have no documentation, they have no access to work, they can basically just be kept—intentionally trapped in these systems that prevent them from establishing and moving forward with their lives.”
Already in a precarious situation, displaced members of the LGBTQIA+ community often land in places that are microcosms of the ones they left, leaving them at continued risk of discrimination due to their gender identity or sexual orientation.
The first SafePlace shelter was established on the streets of Istanbul in 2017 after founder Justin Hilton witnessed the extreme violence the trans community was experiencing there. More shelters were established in Turkey, Lesvos, and Athens, with up to 22 shelters providing case management services, referrals for legal aid, psychosocial support, food and clothing distribution, and livelihood training.
During livelihood training, the SafePlace team noticed internal barriers that were keeping individuals from capitalizing on opportunities, even if they were offered to them for free. And that's where The Dream Academy was born.
“We recognized the challenge that comes from having this trauma—trauma of being ostracized and kicked out of your home and your family and your culture for being queer. It is then also the trauma of having to deal with the reality that is forced upon those who have to leave their homes and become asylum seekers or refugees or forcibly displaced. The Dream Academy seeks to unlock those internal barriers and help people reframe what they have experienced as a strength instead of a burden.”
The first cohort of Dream Academy graduates began the 10-week community-led program in the spring of 2020. Since then, the Dream Academy has supported and celebrated the endeavors of nearly a thousand graduates across 15 countries through leadership development, job skills training, socio-emotional learning, and the support of SafePlace’s network of partners and funders. The program—and SafePlace as a whole—is now comprised of Dream Academy graduates, who have a deep understanding of the program and the experience of displacement.
When COVID hit in 2020, the Dream Academy quickly moved online, with its first cohort of 35 students starting in the spring of 2021. That turned out to be an unexpected blessing as it completely dissolved any geographic barriers and allowed them to connect with people in places they’d never been able to reach before. And now it has become one of their flagship programs.
