U of T helps Anna Amy Ho champion society’s most vulnerable people

Sep 12, 2019

It takes a university to provide the skills and education needed to help leaders like Anna Amy Ho channel their experience into positive change.

Photo of Anna Amy Ho smiling in front of the downtown Toronto skyline.
Photo by Sean Howard

Anna Amy Ho (MSW 2019), is an award-winning child welfare and victims advocate, and someone who has first-hand experience helping others facing life’s most harrowing challenges. She is also a public speaker, consultant, volunteer and aerialist/acrobat.

At age 13, Ho witnessed an unimaginable act of violence when she saw the murder of her mother and grandmother by her mother’s abusive partner. At 16, she ended up living on her own.

Despite growing up without a family, Ho received the emotional and practical support she needed to go to university and earn a graduate degree at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work.

Because dance was pivotal to her healing from abuse and grief, Ho developed a passion for dance movement therapy (DMT). Her goal is to create a therapeutic arts centre where people can access DMT, music and other arts-based forms of therapy.

“As a soon-to-be graduate of the Master of Social Work program,” she says, “I know first-hand the important role our faculty plays in nurturing tomorrow’s social workers to address important issues such as cyber bullying and violence against women.”

Please give to the University of Toronto today, and help others like Anna Amy Ho apply their gifts and experience to become champions for society’s most vulnerable people.