{"id":38132,"date":"2026-05-07T13:29:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T17:29:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=38132"},"modified":"2026-05-07T13:29:28","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T17:29:28","slug":"dare-to-rise-marks-first-year-of-community-impact-at-royal-rose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/dare-to-rise-marks-first-year-of-community-impact-at-royal-rose\/","title":{"rendered":"Dare To Rise marks first year of community impact at Royal Rose"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Absane \u201cAbbie\u201d Ibrahim found herself at a crossroads when she and her two sons left a negative domestic situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overwhelmed by all she needed to do to forge a new path, she realized she needed a village of support to rise above the adversity \u2013 but didn\u2019t know where to turn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In looking for her village of support, she laid the foundation of a supportive village of her own \u2013 and co-founded Dare to Rise, a foundation that has brought together women of shared experiences to uplift families, support individuals, and help forge change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The non-profit foundation marked a full year of community impact last week at Aurora\u2019s Royal Rose Gallery celebrating how far they\u2019ve come over the last twelve months while also acknowledging there\u2019s still much work to do in helping community members \u201crise up\u201d to achieve their full potential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTo rise it takes a village,\u201d says Ibrahim, who co-founded Dare to Rise with Chika Oh. \u201cI went to Family Court in Newmarket and there you\u2019re just a number \u2013 they\u2019re nice, they\u2019re warm, but you\u2019re so overwhelmed that you don\u2019t know what you need to do for your next step. They give you a pamphlet with all the legal aid names, there are hundreds of names, you don\u2019t know who to choose \u2013 you go home and you\u2019re really panicking. You have kids to take care of, you don\u2019t know what you\u2019re doing, and your brain just freezes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGoing through that process was extremely overwhelming. I\u2019m educated, I\u2019m a strong person, but to go through that alone was not fun \u2013 and it was the hardest moment in my life. I\u2019m part of the community, I work a lot, but nobody knew I was going through that\u2026. There are so many other women going through this, so I had the audacity, the courage, to create this organization. This is my story. This was my niche I wanted to help, give them a template, and I wanted to take the word \u2018single mother\u2019 back and not be ashamed, because single moms are doctors, nurses, cooks, cleaners, and we\u2019re everything in one person.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ibrahim describes the celebration of their successful first year of mentorship and lending a hand as a \u201cperfect\u201d evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since its inception, the grassroots-supported organization has stepped up to assist 55 local moms and their families. Help has ranged from securing them diapers and infant formula to providing free one-on-one life coaching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey feel welcomed, they feel heard, they feel seen, and that, for me, is encouragement to continue,\u201d says Ibrahim of working with clients through the foundation. \u201cThere are so many organizations out there and they\u2019re all good, but the way we approach things is we do it organically one-on-one. We listen to them because all the women involved on our team have been through something like that. For them to look at us [knowing] where we\u2019ve been and where we are today, they feel more connected and that they can do this, too. It\u2019s a reflection of different cultures, different backgrounds, and different stages of our lives, and over the past year there has been a lot of organic referrals to us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dare to Rise is not content to rest on the laurels of a successful first year, however. They\u2019re hard at work launching new programs and workshops for women and youth to address gaps they see in existing services, building upon their foundations of Legal Navigation, Mental Health & Wellness, Creative Expression & Arts, and Community Empowerment and Literacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They\u2019re also aiming to increase their community outreach and build that village that is at the heart of it all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI would love for people to connect with us to volunteer,\u201d says Ibrahim. \u201cWe\u2019re open to people from different fields \u2013 youth, to women, and men, too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information about Dare to Rise, how to apply for services, and to become involved as a volunteer, visit daretorisefoundation.org.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Absane \u201cAbbie\u201d Ibrahim found herself at a crossroads when she and her two sons left a negative domestic situation. Overwhelmed by all she needed to do to forge a new path, she realized she needed a village of support to rise above the adversity \u2013 but didn\u2019t know where to turn. In looking for her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":38133,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/2026-05-07-07.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-9V2","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-15 12:44:06","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38132"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38134,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38132\/revisions\/38134"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}