Please help us bring an Eritrean family of five to Canada

We need your help! The Ripple Refugee group is sponsoring a young mother and her four children, all under 8 years old. The family was forced to flee their home in Eritrea and is currently residing under precarious circumstances in neighboring Sudan. Eritrea is recognized as having one of the most repressive regimes in the world. 

The UNHCR and the Canadian Government have reviewed and approved the family’s application for refugee status and they could arrive in Toronto before this coming Christmas. Our group has chosen to support this young mum and her small children because they are very vulnerable and because we think we can make a huge impact on their lives.

But we need to raise $25,000 to make this happen. Any donations over and above this amount will be used for refugee sponsorships our group will undertake in 2019.

Tax-receipted donations can be made on-line via the Rosedale United Church’s (our sponsorship agreement holder) donation page at Canada Helps (please click here). Please be sure to indicate in the box marked “Include a message for this charity” that the donation is for: RUC-25 Ripple Refugee Project.

Eritreans seeking safe passage to Sudan (credit: UNHCR)

Because of the generous support of our donors we have been able to sponsor and settle two Syrian families and one individual over the last three years, totalling twelve people. You can read about their incredible stories and the journey that our group of concerned citizens from Toronto has been on in our blog.

For more information about donating to our group, please click here. 

Keeping a balance between the now and my roots

Amr Al-Farham, his wife Rasha and their son Kareem arrived in Toronto in December 2016. They are the second Syrian family our group had sponsored to come to Canada. We asked Amr to give our supporters an update about how the family has settled in.  

I promised, with pleasure, that I would write a post a year after our arrival and now it’s been almost 19 months. My wife and I were, and still are, overwhelmed with life, and this is another sign of becoming Torontonians. I think that one of the most important signs of becoming a Torontonian is that what you think you can do is way less compared to what you can actually do. 

When I knew that moving to Canada is happening, my child had just gotten out of the incubator after two months of intensive care. He had been born prematurely. To celebrate both events, we threw a big party at our flat in the city of Gaziantep, which we call Aintab, in the south of Turkey. During the party, my Syrian friend who had been to Canada before gave me what sounded like a very precious advice: “Amr, you won’t believe me if I told you that the country is extremely cold. Please wrap-up very well even under your pants as many people lose their genitals due to the extreme cold. If you’re not well prepared, your genitals will fall off and you will lose them forever.” 

My friend’s advice was untrue but the cold he told me about was something I never experienced in my life. I know now where the famous Game of Thrones’ phrase “Winter is coming” comes from, and how weather here controls not only the way people dress “the crows on the wall” but also how people act, react, live, behave and even smile.

Upon arrival, most people in Toronto have been very welcoming. I later figured out that the reason was that we were the hot topic in the news. We were the topic of debate and, to a much lesser degree, a target of insult for some conservatives. Unlike many Syrian friends in the diaspora who were hiding their identity in the public fearing becoming a target of hate, discrimination or just simply getting bombarded with tons of political and religious questions, I decided to say out loud that I had recently arrived as a Syrian refugee and was open to all responses. In downtown Toronto, the responses were usually warm and welcoming.

However, I would receive the strangest comments and questions that one would not expect. Here are some examples from different people during the past 18 months:

-   "You’re Syrian! Oh wow, that’s cool! I am happy to meet one in person, are you really as traumatized as they say in the news?"

-   "Oh, welcome to Canada buddy! May I ask a question; did you really cross the sea and walk across Europe in order to make it here?"

-   "We are glad you are here and safe; do you need toasters? We have an extra one?"

In our culture we use different bread (what people call pita here is actually Syrian bread), so toasters are not essential in our diet. But my answer to the last question was: “Thank you very much, what we really need here is a job.”

Speaking English and having university degrees helped us jump many steps forward. Ripple Refugee group understood this from the very first time they met us. Instead of registering us in a language school or showing us how to take a first TTC ride, they put huge efforts into networking and helping us write our resumes and cover letters in an attractive way for a Canadian employer. I want to mention the invaluable one-on-one meetings with group member Keith, who is a HR specialist.

With all the support we received, and by being proactive, flexible and positive, by talking to everyone and sending our resumes everywhere, my wife started working in a media company in February. She has since been promoted and given a permanent contract, while I was able to get a limited contract with Doctors Without Borders as a project manager. 

Being in an advantaged position, I volunteered my language skills and translated for Syrian newcomer families who did not speak any English, which connected me with many families who were not as advantaged as we were back home. They told me how determined they were to build a new life for themselves and for their loved ones. They were eager to study, or just jump at any job opportunity and start providing for their families despite all the challenges. I was also introduced to different private sponsorship groups who were from different age groups and different professions. Some were faith based while other were just neighborhood groups, work colleagues or even dog walkers. But what they all shared is that they were amazing people who were willing to provide as much support and care as possible.

Fleeing a war-torn country is not something that is easy to overcome. We still have our parents in relatively safer cities but with mortars occasionally falling around and kidnappings. They live under a brutal, oppressive and corrupt regime in a permanent failed economy and prevailing misery in the air. We have friends and family who are scattered around the world, with similar education qualifications. Some have been successful while others are still struggling. We talk to them on the phone and many reveal how desperate and helpless they are. I believe that if my friends in Germany, Spain, France or even Turkey and Egypt were privately sponsored and provided with similar support opportunities as happened to me and my wife, they would have been doing much better now and their host countries would have been benefiting from their skills.

In my mindset now, I am not a refugee anymore. I am a newcomer with skills, a Torontonian who follows up with elections, local news and checks the TTC updates every weekend. I am writing this article while my son is running around me, mumbling short sentences of mixed English and Syrian Arabic words. I have a daily struggle of how to keep a balance between the now and the roots, the future and the past, my current Canadian dream of a diverse, fair and open society and my Syrian dream of a stable democratic and pluralist country.  

By Amr Al-Faham

Canada's recurring refugee debate ignores our historical experience

With the recent increase in refugee claimants crossing unannounced into our country from the U.S., Canada’s approach to refugees is once again being hotly debated.

While there is a commonly held view amongst Canadians that we have been, and continue to be, a very welcoming country when it comes to refugees and other immigrants, the reality is that over the last 150 years nearly every large wave of immigration has faced significant resistance. And, in pretty much every case, the arguments against allowing in whichever group it is at the time have largely been the same.

Our lack of historical memory concerning our often-conflicted attitude toward immigration prevents us from learning from the past and leads us to keep repeating the same tired debate over and over again.

When a boatload of desperate Tamils arrived off of Vancouver’s shores in 2010, the Harper government declared it a national emergency, recalled parliament from summer recess, passed new laws and argued that the 400 or so bedraggled people posed a significant threat to our security.

Canada had virtually the same reaction in 1939 when a boatload of Jews fleeing Nazi persecution on the MS St. Louis tried unsuccessfully to land in Nova Scotia, and in 1914 when the Komagata Maru arrived in Vancouver waters carrying Sikhs.

Sikhs on-board the Komagata Maru

Like many Canadians, I have always been proud of the role that Canada played in providing sanctuary to African Americans fleeing slavery via the Underground Railway. However, at the time, many of our ancestors viewed the fleeing slaves as “illegals” who, because they were not properly screened, represented a potential security threat and integration challenge. Sound familiar?

Exactly the same arguments are now being used against the few hundred poor souls that are currently crossing our borders each month fleeing persecution in the hope of finding a better life.

What is interesting is that over the years, the reasons cited by those opposed to each major wave of immigration and refugee resettlement have almost always been the same. They have argued that immigration from this particular group should be minimized because these people have a different culture, a different system of values and beliefs; that they won’t be able to integrate; that they will be a drag on our economic resources; that there are too many and as a result that they will swamp our society and change our national identity. That they are a security threat.

In the early 1900s immigration from China was resisted since there was a fear that numerically they would swamp us and that our security was threatened by the Asian diseases they would bring with them.

Chinese labourers detraining camp, Petawawa, ON.Credit: Meredith, C.P./Library and Archives Canada

From the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s there was considerable hostility to Irish Catholic immigration. For many, the Irish represented an undesirable cultural group whose allegiance was more to Rome and the Catholic Church than to Canadian laws and values.

Leading up to and during the Second World War practically no Jewish refugees were allowed into the country because, it was argued, they had different religious and cultural beliefs and practices, which would make it hard for them to integrate. And once again, the security concerns were raised — how could we be sure that no German agents were hiding amongst the valid Jewish refugees, ready to attack our country once they were resettled into Canada?

Given that the same alarmist, anti-newcomer arguments have proven, in every case, to be invalid over the last 150 years, perhaps it’s time that we acknowledge there is nothing to fear from these waves of immigration. Instead, let’s recognize that, as in the past, each new wave does in fact end up integrating into our society and contributing to making this country the vital, culturally rich and economically strong mosaic that it is.

Canadians should have greater faith in the overarching strength and resilience of our Canadian identity and the universal appeal of our values when concerns about newcomer integration are raised. We have a wealth of historical experience to show that this faith would be well-founded.

This opinion article by RRP chair Andrew FitzGerald was first published in the Toronto Star, May 16, 2017

Fundraising: How our group did it

Wanting to help refugee families start new lives in Canada - under Canada's Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program - first means fundraising. 

Of course, fundraising is only one part of the resettlement process; there are already good resources to help groups learn how to do the many other things that need to be done, such find and furnish accommodations, navigate the healthcare and education systems, even how to make an airport welcome sign.

We’ve not, however, seen a single resource on how to fundraise. But this blog post is also not a “how to fundraise for your refugee family” either. It’s something between “how we made fundraising happen” and “how fundraising happened to us.” It’s a case study: a case in how our group - one of hundreds of private sponsorship groups - has raised over $50,000 so far to resettle a family of eight.  Because we're not done. Human need is human need, and there's still a lot more out there unfortunately. So while we've raised enough for one family (from Syria) and are awaiting their imminent arrival, we continue to fundraise because we intend to sponsor and settle additional families. Our overall goal is to raise as much as possible. More money = more refugee families safe in Canada. 

A lot of other groups have asked us how we've done it so far, and we find the same situation over and again: people who are fearless about assuming responsibility for a refugee family from somewhere they may not have heard of before recently, who will find and furnish shelter for them, and, for the next year, commit to supporting the family each step of the way as they integrate into life in Canada. All this the sponsor groups seem to take in stride.

But what scares them? The FUNDRAISING.

And so here's the fundraising part of The Ripple Refugee Project story to now. Some of this may read as superb luck meeting opportunity. It was. But there's an equal amount of opportunity meeting preparedness. If you’re also part of a group trying to fundraise for a refugee family, know that you have just as much luck, opportunity, and preparedness waiting for you as we did. It’s all a ripple effect when you want something so much for other people.

Here’s how we raised the money:

1. We gelled as a team. We didn’t all know each other four months ago, and together had taken on a big mandate. Our motivation is part of our shared common humanity, but still: the work must get done. We’ve also signed a Memorandum of Understanding amongst ourselves.

It’s taken us two or three months to really get humming, because we made sure to put in strong administrative processes before diving into the fundraising. Form, norm, storm.

We’ve a strong leader/chairperson in our group’s founder, and also made sure we had a firm understanding of our own roles. We’re know that fundraising is social, and that fundraising culture starts within - all our meetings start with a potluck dinner, which we linger over. Because it’s over these dinners that the culture of our group formed and is still forming, based on the different backgrounds, attitudes, and expectations each member brings. Because people are different, groups are all different. We continue to monitor our group dynamic and tweak our approach and philosophy as we deepen our relationships and understand each other more.

2. We set our financial goal. In educating ourselves on our sponsorship options as private citizens, we learned there were two streams we could consider:

1. Named Case: where private citizens identify and put forth name(s) of people who should be considered refugees to bring to Canada. In this stream, it takes at least 12 months for the government to review the file, and the process could take years before resettlement is a reality. And the full cost of sponsorship is shouldered by the private citizens.

1. BVOR (“Blended Visa Office-Referred” program): a three-way partnership among the UNHCR, Government of Canada, and private sponsorship groups. In this scenario, people's cases have already been reviewed and deemed eligible for refugee status in Canada. The advantage of this stream is the timeline is short: the file of the refugee has already been approved, and in many cases they’re ready to travel. Best of all, the government will pay around 40% of the cost of resettling.

Originally, we were targeting a family of four, which costs $27,000. As the government would be kicking in $10,000, we needed $17,000 in an account. As we have a large group (17 members) we felt that everyone’s portion was doable (though we didn’t then and have never monitored each group members’ fundraising progress; in notionally dividing the goal by the number of group members, we felt success was doable). $17,000 was our original fundraising goal to sponsor a family of four (though the situation changed for us).  

3. We created a Bridge Fund. This was money that was on loan by us, Ripple Refugee Project members. Before we could even put our hand up to apply to sponsor a family, we had to have the money in our account. At the same time, we decided we didn’t want to start soliciting with a general pitch. We felt as a group that our fundraising would be most effective if we had a profile of “our” family and their story. It was a conundrum: we couldn’t get a profile until we had raised a lot of money, and yet we didn’t want to fundraise until we had the family's profile. So we put the money in ourselves on loan to trigger getting matched with a specific family whose story we could tell. As donations come in, members are reimbursed or decide to just leave their loans as additional gifts. 

4. We created a web presence through our blog and Facebook page. These establish our legitimacy, we think, and also give us a place to solicit online donations, and update donors on our progress. They also give the outside world a way to contact us.

5. We ensured financial accountability and donor stewardship. We developed financial controls and wrote a financial policy, which is public. We’re always updating our donor FAQ (“how will you disburse money to the family?” or “what happens if you raise more money than your stated goal?”). And we’ve started sending email updates to our donor list as we get meaningful information to report.

6. The Syrian crisis and Ripple Refugee Group got strong media attention.

September 2, 2015: four years into the crisis, little Aylan Kurdi’s picture became a symbol of the unacceptable human suffering of the Syrian civil war. Finally, the world was paying attention.

September 5, 2015: Luck is what happens when preparedness meets opportunity. Ripple member Dr. Raghu Venugopal’s appearance on CBC's The Current was pivotal in getting us matched with a family by Lifeline Syria (the executive director was listening to the interview), and kick-started our fundraising.

7. We got adopted. After seeing the picture of lifeless Aylan on the Turkish beach, Dr. Jennifer Bryan, emergency physician at University Health Network, sent out an email to a group of 70 doctors, suggesting that they together should help with this humanitarian crisis. On the distribution list was Raghu Venugopal, just fresh from his national media appearance on Ripple's behalf. At that point, we’d been matched with our family, and Raghu was able to tell his colleague, Jennifer, this news and suggested the UHN group of doctors work through The Ripple Refugee Project.

Now, the family we’d just been matched with was a special case: three generations comprising of eight family members, one of whom has mobility issues. Our fundraising goal had just necessarily more than doubled, but the UHN doctors agreed it made sense to partner with a larger family and one with medical needs. As individuals, the doctors pledged a total amount together of $44,000 (THANK YOU AGAIN AND MERCI, UHN DOCTORS!).

Traditionally, refugee sponsorship has been done predominantly by the church/synagogue/mosque model. In this age, it makes sense that a congregation of doctors also fulfils this role.

8. We got the ability to give our donors tax receipts. One of our members, a public nurse, is also a Ryerson graduate and we were accepted as part of the Ryerson University Lifeline Syria Challenge campaign. After the media interest, this was the other huge breakthrough to help our fundraising: our donors were able to receive tax receipts, and we could take advantage of Ryerson’s online donation page and gift processing. Thank you Ryerson!

9. We solicited donations. We finally had momentum and gift processing capability. Through letters, email, face-to-face meetings and by social media, we talked about our project all the time, and asked for donations. Through Ryerson, we get a weekly confidential update on new donors to our fund (without showing the individual amounts).

10. We’re always motivated by the ripple effect. You just never know what can happen. The friend of one of our members saw the solicitation request on Facebook, and forwarded it to a friend. Who sent it to another friend. Who showed it to a client. This client came forward and pledged up to $1 million to resettle 20 families (note: this philanthropist will not be working through our group. There's no way we can manage more than one family at a time).

The concentric circles of our ripple effect also manifest in the hours we spend speaking at rotary clubs and with other private sponsorship groups just starting out. We aim to work in the open, and have a public Google drive with all the documents we've created that others may find useful. 

And we hope that if you’re in such a group, that you find our fundraising story inspiring. And if you’re not, that you consider forming your own group to resettle one family of the four million refugees who've had to flee their home country, or making a donation.

By Rebecca Davies (this post was also published on the 101Fundraising blog)

New Canadian government support for Syrian refugees

Things are finally moving in Canada. International Development Minister Christian Paradis announced a Syrian emergency relief fund on Saturday that will match donations from Canadians up to $100 million.

And on the same day, the Ontario government pledged $10.5 million to the Syrian refugee crisis and hopes the province can resettle 10.000 Syrian refugees by the end of 2016.

A Global News reporter did a short interview with our group member Andrew for her story.

A balance of excitement and apprehension

We're more or less ready, as a group. We've had several meetings to get to know each other, learn about the process, and discuss how we will function. We seem to have some commonalities of what motivates us: a variable blend of social action, civic responsibility, and a chafing to do something to alleviate suffering. For myself, I think I've found a balance of excitement and apprehension about embarking on this journey.

Currently, however, what's delaying us is that we have not yet been accepted by a Sponsorship Agreement Holder (SAH). The SAH is something of the guarantor with the Canadian government, signing the contract on our behalf, saying that we will fulfill our end of the bargain to settle a refugee family. I find it strange that the SAH's recognized by Citizenship and Immigration Canada are almost all either religious groups or ethnically-based. We, as a group of secular-minded, socially-motivated, concerned citizens who are ethnically diverse and not religiously-inclined... don't seem to quite fit the mold. But surely we are not alone in our willingness to help? We will likely end up working with one of the churches, in an arrangement of convenience, but I am uneasy about the "fit" of this relationship.

Then there is the irony of the Syrian refugees. Our group--I think like many--started because we were moved to action by the continued terrible desperation in Syria. Four million Syrians have now fled their country since the conflict began. The Canadian government announced early this year that they would accept an additional 10 000 Syrian refugees. But there are no Syrians "available" on the lists of government-approved refugees awaiting settlement, despite that many other groups are waiting and willing to help them settle. There is a bureaucratic bottleneck somewhere. I think it's tragic. 

We've decided that there are many people in great need, so we will not insist on Syrians. Indeed, there are many hidden conflicts and forgotten human rights issues. The lists include Eritreans, Congolese, Burmese, and others. The Syrian crisis motivated many of us; I can only hope that our motivation can also benefit the Syrian people who have been affected.

By Wendy Lai

How it all started

I went to high-school in downtown Toronto in the late 1970s with an extremely diverse group of students.  A large number of the kids were ”‘new Canadians” who, along with their families, had in one way or another ended up here in Canada.

And I remember thinking at the time that if a person wanted to get a sense of the world’s troubled spots over the last 40 years, that you wouldn’t have to do any research. All you would need to do is go around my classroom and ask the students where their families were originally from.  Eastern Europe, Korea, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Columbia, the Congo, Somalia etc. etc.  - they were all represented in my class. 

At that time, back in the late 70’s and early 80’s, Toronto still seemed like a very Anglo-Saxon kind of place.  But that’s completely changed now.  Over ½ of the population of Toronto was born in a different country.  There is no single ethnic group making up the majority of citizens – we are all minorities here.  And if you ask Torontonians what makes their city special, what they love most about the place, I am sure most people would talk about its ethnic and cultural diversity and its over-riding sense of tolerance.

Over the past few months my wife and I have been watching with alarm the reports regarding the massive refugee crises that has exploded in connection with the Syrian war and with the people fleeing in boats in the Mediterranean Sea.  Current global events, in Syria and other countries, have created what the UN has described as the worst humanitarian crisis since WWII.  

In past crises we would get involved by firing off a cheque to a relief agency, signing a petition or possibly highlighting our concern to our local MP.  But in this case, given the scale of the crisis, it doesn’t seem like enough. 

In 1979 / 80, in what many people consider one of Canada’s “finest hours”, private citizens from all walks of life responded to the Vietnamese “Boat People” crisis by privately sponsoring 34,000 refugees to resettle in this country over an 18 month period. 

Unlike most European countries, a central tenet of the Canada refugee policy is to rely on, and in many cases require, the involvement of private citizens in the sponsorship and settlement process.  For example, the Canadian government has offered to resettle an additional 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next 3 years, however 6000 of these spots will only be filled if private citizens step forward in order to sponsor and help settle them.

With this in mind, my wife and I sent out invitations in May inviting people we know over to our house for a “Refugee Awareness” meeting.

Andrew FitzGerald