Igbo Women Union

In celebration of International Women’s Day 2025, our team partnered with community leader Anurika Ohalezim to capture and share the powerful experiences of Igbo women living in Antwerp. This project explores how migration reshapes identity, community, and motherhood—and highlights the extraordinary resilience that emerges when women build support networks far from home.

Weaving together first-hand tales of migration and self-rediscovery, this project shines a light on Igbo women who balance Nigerian roots with life in Belgium, builds on their peer-to-peer support networks, and sparks conversations about gender, resilience, and belonging in our ever-changing world.

Through intimate story circles and one-on-one interviews, collaborative community mapping workshops, and vibrant cultural exchange events, these women navigate language barriers and legal hurdles, reconnect with their roots, build peer-to-peer support networks from language cafés to childcare co-ops, and raise children who carry both Igbo heritage and diasporic dreams.

This work seeks to capture women’s migration journeys in a vibrant video series and develop handy support toolkits. Participants have also shown an interest in teaming up with local NGOs to launch language cafés and childcare co-ops, host interactive mapping and cultural exchange events.

By shining a light on language barriers, self-rediscovery, collective empowerment, and the joys and challenges of dual-identity motherhood, we’ve already inspired over 1,500 viewers and 200 volunteers—and this is just the start of more stories, workshops, and roundtables to keep their voices strong.