The Barrhead Community Refugee Committee, as the group currently co-chaired by Rita Lyster, Ralph Helder and Sharon Foster is unofficially calling itself, made the decision to begin the application process to sponsor a Syrian family in Barrhead at their third meeting held at the Barrhead United Church on Tuesday, Jan. 12.
“Some of the questions raised from our last meeting included how long a family needs to stay in its sponsor community and who chooses the family,” Lyster said, adding that the answer to the former was twelve months, while the answer to the latter was that the committee makes the choice on who to sponsor.
“It remains easiest for us if we go through an already existing organization or constituent group, such as the Mennonite Central Committee, and while we have debated doing our sponsorship privately, it looks like we will be going the blended visa office referred route,” she added.
A Blended Visa Office Referred (BVOR) program is a United Nations compiled list of vetted refugees, Foster, a minister of Barrhead United Church and one of the group’s co-chairs, explained, adding that the list is distributed on a national level.
“That’s why Westlock is having such a hard time picking a family,” she said, adding that each time a family is chosen, they had already been placed in a different community and the process has to be started anew.
“For the Syrian cases, all of the families in the BVOR are Sunni Muslim but there is very little other information present,” Foster said. “Obviously serious medical conditions are in that information, but the likes and dislikes, the nit-picky stuff, that’s not there.”
According to Foster, the refugees coming to Canada are given social insurance numbers the moment they get off the plane in Toronto.
“As we discussed in earlier meetings, our financial responsibilities to the family we sponsor will be for up to one year and is equivalent to the local provincial social assistance rates. It won’t be the same in every province and it’s almost not enough to live on, so we need to be aware of that,” she added.
Foster, who attended a ministerial meeting in Onoway, explained that because the incoming refugees are receiving their SIN cards right away, they can be employed almost immediately. “Once they are able to contribute to their own cost of living, there is a formula available to help reduce our input but in a lot of cases, we have to remember that these people are fleeing a war-torn country and are coming here with nothing. Some might have financial resources, but the majority do not.”
A member of the Lutheran community and an interested resident who has attended previous meetings, Jackie Radke said that her church is willing to furnish or supply a room such as a kitchen.
Barrhead resident Rebecca Nikkol told the group that her 4-H Club would be donating the money raised through bake sales this year.
Helder, another of the group’s co-chairs, said that his church, the Barrhead Christian Reformed Church, would be holding one offering and is encouraging its congregation to support the needs of whichever family comes to Barrhead.
“We have two separate people willing to commit ten per cent a piece, $3,000 from each, and approximately $450 from my own employees,” Lyster said, adding that the group is in the process of setting up a bank account to hold onto these funds and that interested people should make cheques out to the Barrhead United Church.
“It will have to be assigned Refugee sponsorship fund, or something like that,” she said.
Concerning the difference between the last meeting’s turn-out on Dec. 9 of approximately 20 people to Monday’s dozen, Foster said giving to any one group should not be mutually exclusive. “I think we can be generous and we can do both,” she said, adding that the purpose wasn’t to put people on the spot.
“We can’t necessarily put a cap on people’s generosity either.”
According to Radke, a group out of Peace River, is bringing in a family and is concerned about Barrhead’s group. “The Peace River group has between 200 and 300 volunteers helping out with this, and we have…20,” she said, adding it was important for the group to grow.
“I believe that if you present the need, people will come,” Helder said, adding that was why this group takes down the names of people who attend. “That way we can follow up with people if they don’t attend another meeting, if they’re sick or whatever, to gauge their continued interest in helping these Syrian refugees, as well as filling some of the other positions we need filled.”
Foster said this program is a launch pad for families fleeing for their lives.
“At the end of the day, we want these people to be successful and we’re trying to provide them with a fresh start,” Foster said, adding if the sponsored family ultimately chooses to move on to a bigger city, that’s their choice.
Charlie Parsons, a resident interested in the group’s sponsorship efforts, wondered if operating under the Barrhead United Church banner would cause a sense of exclusion for the other church groups.
Helder did not think so.
“If I look at it from our perspective, the Barrhead Christian Reformed Church perspective, we’re small and we don’t have the capacity necessarily to draw on the congregation as a volunteer base,” Helder said, “Not to provide the services that would be required. It would tap us out. I really like the community initiative here and drawing in people from other areas, whether they belong to a faith-based community or not though.”
“Our concern is that people think it is solely the Barrhead United Church,” Johnson said. “We want to emphasize that it is a community-based group and not merely the one church involved.”
“You don’t need to be part of a faith-based group in order to support a refugee family,” Helder said, adding that to him, it is a little sad to exclude somebody from participation based on their religion.
Donations are taxable and people will receive a receipt from Barrhead United Church, Helder said, and stressed again that they did not know at this time whether the federal government would match those donation.
Anyone interested in helping out in any way, whether financially or otherwise, is advised to attend the next meeting on Feb. 11 at the Barrhead United Church, at 7 p.m., or to contact Rita Lyster.
