Zoe Sahloul - April 2022

Founder and Executive Director, New England Arab American Organization

After surviving 20 years of war in Lebanon, Zoe and her husband emigrated to Canada before moving to Maine in 1997. “We asked ourselves, is Lebanon the place to have a family? Do we want to have our kids survive the same fears, the same isolation, that we had to survive during the war?” In Maine, they found a home and a community: “I was blessed by having my neighbors, my friends, becoming my family. I found an aunt who can be there for my kids. I found my friend’s mother to be the grandmother for my kids.”

Working as an interpreter with immigrants from Arab countries, Zoe saw that many shared a sense of isolation and depression, which led to her creating her own non-profit: “What we are trying with our community is to create these opportunities for them and help them find relationships and people that will support them and call them family. We provide a safe space for families, for women to gather, to find a place they can call community.” For Zoe, racial justice can’t happen without dialogue. “For us to put each other in each other’s shoes and to say: This can be me. If every day or every week someone can try to be kind to a stranger, you will learn — we will all learn — so much from each other.” She recommends reading How to Be an Anti-Racist by Ibram Kendi and Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race, by Derald Wing Sue.