Serisha Iyar
Solidarity Sessions | Ottawa, Ontario
Serisha Iyar (she/her) is the Executive Director of Leading in Colour, an organization dedicated to equipping racialized youth in activism-based skills through peer-to-peer knowledge sharing in order to advocate for their communities. Serisha holds a Bachelor of Arts from McGill University in Political Science & World Religions. She has held fellowships at The Mosaic Institute and Amnesty International and was the first Canadian awarded the Youth to the Front Fund by the We Are Family Foundation. Serisha draws from the teachings of the anti-Apartheid movement alongside liberation and womanist theologies, and is committed anti-oppression, global decolonization, anti-racism, and intersectional analysis.
About the Project
Solidarity Sessions are closed panel events dedicated to unlearning and re-learning, specifically designed for racialized youth. We look inwards at issues of oppression and how they manifest within racialized communities. Our sessions are designed to showcase the lived experiences of community members and how community-led and trauma-informed decision-making can ensure we take tangible action in solidarity with one another. Each panel aims to navigate a particular form of oppression and the way it impacts different racialized communities while examining culturally competent approaches to challenging these oppressions intergenerationally, and answer calls to action through active allyship and demonstrable solidarity.