Zena Chaudhry and the small details that make a home

A woman needed somewhere safe to go. Zena Chaudhry was helping a family friend leave an abusive situation when she discovered how difficult that apparently simple request could become. Finding an available service was only part of the task. Finding one that understood the woman’s language, religion and daily life was another. The search would become the starting point for Sakeenah Canada, the charity Chaudhry founded in 2018.

There is a temptation to begin a founder’s story with a grand plan. This one begins with the awkward distance between an offer of help and help someone can actually use. A meal matters differently if you cannot eat it. A room feels different if practising your religion invites hostility. These are everyday details, carrying rather more weight than the word “detail” suggests.

Chaudhry’s response was to make those considerations part of the service itself. Over time, that response grew into housing, remote casework, food access and support for children and families. Her work has kept returning to the same practical question: what has been missed?

The details at the door

Chaudhry holds a Master of Laws in International Human Rights Law. Her career in social services brought that education into close contact with problems at home. Equal treatment becomes a concrete question when someone needs a bed, a meal or a person who can understand what she is saying.

The early experience with her family friend led Chaudhry to look beyond a single unsuccessful search. She heard from women who had encountered hostility in shelters, including interference with their head coverings and prayer. A service could exist, have a door and offer a bed, yet still leave a woman wondering whether she belonged there.

Sakeenah’s founding premise took those accounts seriously. Culturally and religiously sensitive support meant paying attention to food and faith alongside accommodation. It also meant recognizing that a person could need help without living inside one of the charity’s homes. Remote services allowed the organization to work beyond its buildings.

By 2021, the work had reached Montreal. Chaudhry described a woman who felt unable to access available services because of language barriers, discrimination and Islamophobia. The planned physical home followed years of remote work in Quebec. Listening at a distance had helped reveal where a local presence was needed.

A coffee, then two and a half years

One of the consequential conversations in Chaudhry’s career took place at a Tim Hortons in Mississauga. In 2019, Reshma Niazi, an experienced foster parent, wanted to talk about Muslim children in foster care. She had met Chaudhry at an event about Sakeenah’s shelters and thought the organization should consider another gap.

Niazi brought experience accumulated over years of fostering. The team followed up with research into the needs of Muslim children in care. Developing a program took two and a half years, with ministry requirements, home evaluations and training to address. Coffee was the easy part. The paperwork required rather more staying power.

The licensed foster program launched in August 2022. Afterward, Chaudhry called Niazi to thank her for raising the issue. That return call is a useful detail in a story about founding things. The idea had arrived through someone else’s experience, and Chaudhry acknowledged the person who brought it to her.

For Chaudhry, a child’s religious practices belonged in decisions about placement. Food, Ramadan and clothing could all matter. She made room for families of different faiths, provided they understood and respected the child’s background. The work required learning how a particular child lived, rather than treating a shared label as sufficient preparation.

She also argued for support that allowed children to participate in ordinary activities, including sport. Her stated intention extended beyond a young person’s eighteenth birthday. She put the promise simply. A child’s ability to join in, and a young adult’s ability to ask for help, were part of the future she wanted the program to consider.

“Our doors are always open.”

Zena Chaudhry · on support beyond foster care

An address, an income, a way forward

Chaudhry has described the goal of a shelter stay with refreshing specificity: “Their own house with an income in place.” It is an outcome a person can picture. There is an address, a way to pay for life and some freedom to make plans.

That goal asks a charity to think beyond the arrival. The first safe night matters enormously, but applications, employment and housing decisions continue after it. Casework connects the immediate offer of accommodation with the practical work of establishing an independent household.

In Winnipeg, Sakeenah’s expansion followed growing demand from Manitoba. The team connected with local shelters and resource centres to understand that need. The home opened in October 2022, bringing the organization’s housing work into the Prairies. Within its first week, a family had already been seen and intake had begun.

The public work behind that opening included meetings. In Manitoba’s legislature, a member recalled Chaudhry and her colleagues visiting the NDP caucus earlier that year to explain their plans and fundraising. The finished home had a history of conversations with people who might help make it possible.

Growth also creates obligations to the places an organization enters. A new home needs local relationships, staff and a reliable way to respond when someone asks for support. Chaudhry’s national role has involved taking an approach formed in one community and doing the work required to make it useful in another.

A grocery cart is a small freedom

The People’s Market brought a different everyday setting into Sakeenah’s work. Launched in 2022, the food program uses a grocery-store model. Clients move through aisles with carts and select available items for their households. Choosing dinner is an ordinary act; preserving that choice is part of the point.

Available food includes pantry staples, produce and frozen items, depending on donations. The groceries are halal. The model leaves room for a family’s preferences and circumstances, rather than requiring every household to make use of an identical selection. Receiving assistance still allows someone to be the person who decides what goes into the cart.

In August 2024, a second location opened in Scarborough. People from the east end had been travelling hours to reach the west-end market. The new location addressed a barrier that the food itself could not solve: the journey required to collect it.

That decision belongs beside the founding story. Chaudhry’s work repeatedly encounters the difference between having a service on offer and making it accessible in daily life. Distance can decide whether someone gets groceries. Language can decide whether a call gets made. Those considerations deserve space in the plan before the doors open.

A founder learns to share the work

The organization Chaudhry now leads has responsibilities spread across homes and programs. Its leadership includes chief operating officer Hafsa Pathan and executive director Nazish Tayab, alongside people responsible for finance, programs and community development. House managers and caseworkers handle the daily encounters on which the charity’s promises depend.

Chaudhry’s letters to supporters repeatedly credit donors, volunteers, staff and partners. There is a practical reason to keep those people in the story. A founder can articulate an intention, but a family experiences it through the colleague answering a question or helping complete an application.

In 2025, the housing program supported 405 women and 233 children. Remote casework served 2,054 clients. Those figures describe different kinds of contact with the organization: living in a home, or working with a caseworker from elsewhere. Both require someone to follow through after the initial request.

The next stage has an organizational dimension as well. Sakeenah’s plans for 2026 include staff and volunteer development, stronger partnerships and long-term financial sustainability. These are the less photogenic parts of keeping a service available. Families depend on them all the same.

Fishing, softball, and a peculiar ambition

There are glimpses of Chaudhry away from the role. Away from work, she enjoys fishing and playing softball. They are pleasantly concrete additions to a public life usually described through programs and responsibilities. A fishing rod and a softball bat require no charitable mission statement.

In 2024, the Canadian Council of Muslim Women included her among its Women Who Inspire honourees. She is also founder and CEO of Sakeenah US, extending her organizational work beyond Canada. Recognition and expansion sit alongside an ambition that pulls in a different direction.

Chaudhry has publicly expressed the hope that one day Sakeenah will no longer need to exist. For someone building a charity, it is a searching definition of success. More services can answer more requests today, while each request remains evidence that people still need somewhere to turn.

Until that hoped-for day, the decisions remain close to the ground. A child should be understood in a new household. A woman should be able to plan for a home and an income. A family should be able to choose food it can use. Chaudhry’s career has taken shape around making those ordinary expectations easier to meet.