The Women Who Inspire Awards are back!
The Canadian Council of Muslim Women (CCMW) hosts this annual celebration honoring changemakers, mentors, advocates, community leaders, creatives, and everyday women whose contributions strengthen Canadian communities. Established in 2007, the Women Who Inspire Awards recognize Canadian Muslim women who demonstrate community leadership and positive change, advocate for gender and racial equity, show leadership, resilience, and innovation, and serve as mentors and role models across diverse fields.
This year’s theme, “Shaping What’s Next: Muslim Women Leading Canada Forward,” highlights the vision, leadership, and influence of Muslim women helping build a stronger and more inclusive future for Canada.
Featured Hosts & Speakers
Duha Elmardi – Panel Moderator
Duha Elmardi is the Education Coordinator of CCMW. She is a Sudanese Canadian resident and nonprofit professional with 15 years of experience as an educator, program and project coordinator, and organizational development consultant in Sudan, Malaysia, the US, and now Canada. She is dedicated to anti-oppression, social change, and creating positive impacts through community organizing, facilitating, and supporting collective work.
Timaj Garad – Featured Spoken Word Performance
Timaj Garad is an Ethiopian-Harari, Toronto-based multi-disciplinary storyteller, arts educator, and community organizer who uses poetry, theatre, and music, and has performed on over 400 stages while facilitating arts-based workshops worldwide. She founded LUMINOUS Fest, Canada’s first Black Muslim arts festival, and co-founded The Sisters’ Retreat, a series of arts-based wellness retreats for Muslim women. She has released the single and music video “Black Gold” and her debut EP “Blooming at the Mouth,” and is currently working on her second EP.
Rania El Mugammar – Keynote Speaker
Rania El Mugammar is a Sudanese Artist, Liberation Educator, Abolitionist, Anti-oppression Consultant, multidisciplinary performer, speaker and published writer. Her work explores reproductive justice, transformative justice & abolition, art as liberation and digital justice.
As a writer, Rania’s work explores themes of identity, womanhood, Blackness, flight, exile, migration, belonging, gender, sexuality and beyond. Rania’s primary mediums are poetry, spoken word and oral storytelling. She is a published poet, storyteller and playwright. Rania is deeply interested in poetic form and the auditory texture of words as well as the visual/aesthetic impact of language and form.
Rania is an experienced anti-oppression, abolition and liberation educator and consultant who is unflinchingly committed to decolonization and freedom as the ultimate goals of her work. She has worked extensively with contemporary arts institutions, STEM based enterprises, media organizations, educational institutions and community/grassroots spaces.
