Communities rally for refugees

After months of preparing, raising funds and filling out paperwork the Heart of Dartmouth refugee sponsorship group is now anxiously waiting to be matched with a family.

Karen Foster, co-chair, says the group was formed in September when the heartbreaking news reports about the deaths of young Alan Kurdi, his brother Galib, and their mother, Rehana, made headlines when three-year-old Alan’s body washed up on a Turkish beach. When she and her husband, Brian, saw the news they immediately knew they had to do something.

They made an announcement a few days later at their church, Grace United, in downtown Dartmouth that they were forming a sponsorship group.

“We got a small group of people together, and from there it just ballooned into more people from church, more people from the surrounding community,” she says. “I think now I have 30 or 40 people on my email list, and then there’s 12 people in our core group whose names are on the paperwork and who form the actual, official sponsorship group.”

Foster explains that there are two ways a sponsorship group can support a refugee family.

“There’s one channel where you split the cost 50-50 with the federal government,” she says, “And there’s one where you pay for everything.”

Foster says her group initially planned to split the cost (the full cost is about $30,000 per family) however once they raised the funds and tried to get matched with a family through the government system they hit a roadblock. Every time their group received a notification that there was a family available for sponsorship, another group elsewhere in the country had already claimed them.

After a month of being frustrated with this process their group started questioning the efficiency of the system and decided to switch to the other channel, which is managed through the Immigration Services Association of Nova Scotia (ISANS). They now hope to be matched with a family who has some friends or family already settled in Nova Scotia.

“They have a list of families that people want to bring over and they’re compiling a list of sponsorship groups who are interested in sponsoring,” Foster says. “In the next week or so they are going to start matching those families and sponsorship groups up.”

Wendy Lill of Dartmouth says some members of her church, Cole Harbour Woodside United, have been watching and learning from Heart of Dartmouth’s experiences. They are part of a group called Cole Harbour Cares and they are in the thick of fundraising efforts to sponsor another refugee family in Dartmouth.

They received a $5,000 grant from the United Church, and have raised another $12,000 so far. They are encouraging members of their congregation to pledge money for 2016, and they are selling gift cards to the public that can be used as Christmas presents. They will also be hosting a fundraising auction at Jamieson’s Irish House and Grill on Monday, Jan. 18.

“It’s getting larger,” she says about their efforts, “It’s certainly getting larger than our congregation. We’re also working with several other churches in Dartmouth that are all just starting to talk. They all want to help in some way.”

Lill says the biggest concern for them is seeing the struggles Grace United’s Heart of Dartmouth has had with being matched with a family.

“What we’re learning from Grace United is that there’s still a lot of chaos at the federal level, and at the international level, in terms of getting families out there and ready to be moved, and ready to be placed, and connected with groups,” Lill says. “There’s a lot of systemic problems and a lot of local coordinators are frustrated by that.”

Lill says while they raise funds, and hope that the government systems get sorted out soon, they’re thinking about other ways that they can make refugee families feel welcome.

“It’s not simply enough to be a good-hearted North American group; we need to be prepared to support people in terms of their culture, in terms of their language, and their social mores; it’s not just about furniture and apartments, you know?” she says. “We want to be prepared. We want to be able to greet people with some Arabic phrases when we meet them at the airport; we want to be able to be respectful of where they’re coming from.”

Lill says the support from the Dartmouth community has been inspiring.

“There’s just so much interest in Cole Harbour in helping out,” she says. “Everybody just wants to figure out some way that they can be involved. It’s a really wonderful spirit.”

Foster agrees.

“People within the church and outside the church have been very generous,” she says, adding that many Dartmouth businesses donated portions of their sales towards the fundraising effort, “It’s actually been kind of overwhelming … It’s just taking that next step in getting the family that has slowed our momentum a little bit.”

Foster says her hope is that whatever family they are matched with will love the community as much as they do.

“We want what is best for whatever family we bring in, but we hope we get a family who feels comfortable, safe and happy in Halifax or Dartmouth and stays forever,” Foster says.

For more information, or to donate or purchase a gift card, please go to www.chwuc.com or www.facebook.com/heartofdartmouth