Mid-June update

We apologize for not having written earlier to let you know what is happening with our Syrian family, but  the sad truth is that very little has been happening. They have been approved, but the Canadian Government has slowed down their pace, and has said some approved families may not arrive until 2017. (The Globe and Mail ran an excellent piece on the problem two weeks ago, which you can read here: http://tinyurl.com/jlxwfcw)

The application to sponsor Mohammad, the fiancé of Nour, the family’s 18 year old daughter, is in the approval stage with the Canadian Unitarian Congress and so he’s taking his place in the queue.  I wrote to Minister of Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship McCallum, expressing our frustration at the glacial pace of processing and got back, “Your support and assistance in the Syrian resettlement project are to be commended, and we understand your desire to have this family arrive in Canada as soon as possible... Thank you for writing and expressing your concerns.”

In the meantime, we are in touch with our family in Jordan. Through the generosity of Dawanet, they will receive $1000 per month from May to October, at which point we will look at where we are. This is a huge help to them, as they need money for food, medicine and their continued education.  We aren’t able to use any of the money Neighbourhood supporters generously donated to our family, as the fact that we are a Canadian charity means the money must be spent in Canada.

I’m sorry to not have more to report, as I’m sure you also are. But at this point, from our end, I’m afraid there doesn’t seem to be much more that we can do.

Michael Polanyi & Peter Marmorek, co-chairs of SEA (Social & Environmental Action Committee)

Stories of Single Syrian Mothers

Al Jazeera has a fine article today on three Syrian mothers and their families, all in camps in Jordan. Gave me some insight into the world from which our family is coming..... Recommended reading.

Things are progressing faster

Lots of news! Nour, the youngest daughter in our family, got engaged to Mohamad. He is also a Syrian refugee and UNHCR approved, so after conferring and discussing, we have decided to sponsor him as well. Really, it was a clear decision: we want to support the family, and not sponsoring him would clearly create divisions. Would Nour come and try to sponsor her soon-to-be husband? Would she stay behind in Jordan? None of those choices would be the kind of positive outcome we’re hoping for, and thanks to the generosity of NUUC and DawaNet, we have the money to support them all. So our family of five is a family of six, with Mohamad’s application to be filled out and sent off really soon.

The application for the family of five has been submitted and approved by the CUC, and by the Canadian Government, and the family has had their medical exams in Jordan, so things are moving very fast. The time before arrival may be down to weeks by now- I would guess under a month.

Are we prepared? Not badly.We have a place for the family to stay (Yay, Susan and Bruce!), and we had a wonderful meeting yesterday at NUUC with support from Bayan and Umar and other members of Dawanet. We’re learning appropriate social guidelines. (Vegetarian food is considered lower class, to my horror) and we have a tremendously strong network in place of volunteers and people helping. There will be things we hadn’t thought of, because that’s how life works, but I’m feeling happy and confident as we head into our first meeting with the family.

Progress, slowly

It’s two and a half weeks, and we are making progress. The finished forms have been sent to the head office, who will check them over, and send them to the government, who will check them over. Then they send word to the Canadian government reps in Jordan, and then the family comes. Two months is a best guess.

But other things are happening. The congregation continues to offer support, both in money and in goods. Bruce and Susan (a wonderful couple) have offered their house for a month. That’s wonderful, because it means we can involve the Alm.’s in the search for a more permanent place, rather than our choosing one in advance. 

We’ve been getting donations of beds, and cabinets, and other goods. People have offered clothing, but as we don’t know whether it’s for summer or winter (let alone issues like size and style) we’re waiting on that.

Then there is training on cultural sensitivity which will be useful, and police checks (I’m cleared, as I was teaching two years ago at a school that needed such checks.) But the best thing is that there is a wonderful sense at NUUC of a community working together to help make a difference in the world.Yes, it’s slower than we all want. But things are moving forward.

Here’s the first place, Hayfaa, where your family will be staying.

Blog Entry by the Alm.'s Family

As a Syrian, I spent my happiest times in my beloved home country, with my loving family. At the head of our family was our dear father, may God have mercy on him and grant him paradise. He was an exemplary father. Then there was our beloved mother, who has done so much for our family behind the scenes. She was, and continues to be, the source of our strength, inspiration and blessings. From her, stems our patience and determination, in times of hardship. 

In 2011, after the beginning of the Syrian revolution, the regime cracked down on citizens with increasing arrests and harassment. To flee the conflict, our family members began to seek refuge in Jordan. However, due to the terrible living conditions there, we decided to try life in Egypt. We lived there for eight months until the Morsi government, whose policies supported the Syrian refugees, fell apart. With Morsi gone, we returned to Jordan thinking it had to be better than what we left behind in Egypt. However, we struggled as we needed to pay 250 dinars, approximately 300 Canadian dollars, in rent for our home, but we had no source of income except for what we were able to save while we still lived in Syria since Jordan does not allow refugees to work.

As refugees, we experienced a high cost of living for both renting a home and simply to survive. Later, we registered with the UNHCR which inconsistently provided us a little bit of food. Our suffering continued for a long time and went from bad to worse with the development of my mother’s health problems. She suffered from diabetes and other health issues. As a refugee, there was no health insurance, so our only option was to stand in line for the clinic or at a humanitarian organization to provide us with her medication after the UNHCR declined to help. 

Our biggest tragedy came with the death of my father. Just a few weeks before we started to think about coming to Canada, the Syrian army dropped a bomb on our home in Daraa and my father died from his injuries. We were devastated and prayed to God every day to relieve us of our suffering and to let us return back to our home. However, the conflict continues and we are still refugees, unable to return to our homeland. We have survived thanks to many who helped us along the way, individuals, organizations, mosques and churches. 

Today, we have new hope as we hear about safety in a distant country. I’ve heard that it is cold in Canada, but also that it is beautiful and that the government respects human rights and freedoms. We’ve seen people risk their lives by sea or land to reach Europe, and yet Canada is compassionate enough so send in planes to take us safely to refuge while processing us as residents in record time. We are grateful and happy to start our lives again in Canada. We can only offer our sincere thanks to those who contributed and moved the process along to bring us over. While your country might be cold, the Canadian compassion makes it warm. God willing, we will see you soon.

A month later…

A month later, and how much has changed, besides the year on our calendars.  We shared a difficult couple of weeks of indecision about how we were supposed to choose a family. There are about four million refugees who have fled Syria– how is one supposed to find the right family? It felt a bit like having a single spot in the lifeboat as the Titanic sunk in front of you. 

Except there were a few factors that helped. Most Syrians don’t want to come to Canada. The CUC (Canadian Unitarian Congress) and Annette from First Unitarian suggested nine families. But we knew so little about them that it was almost impossible to decide.

I contacted a lawyer friend who had once been a student of mine and who is herself a Syrian refugee. She said the person I really needed to talk to was her sister, the Communications Manager of the Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organizations. Amazingly, she was someone whom I’d met in the past, and I remembered the two books she had written. She suggested bringing a project manager from Dawanet, a Muslim charitable organization, who would help if we needed extra money. He turned out to be another ex-student of mine, and remembered me happily from high school days. They both supported our taking the Alm.'s, a family of five. That was a larger family than we had originally imagined we could take on, but Dawanet offered to make up the difference between the money we had and what we needed,  a wonderful and kind offer. All this was presented at the December meeting of SEA, and we have chosen to sponsor the Alm.'s.

What do we know about them? The family consists of a mother and four children. The oldest of the children is a 26 year old male, the other three are females, the youngest of whom is 17. The husband/ father was killed when a bomb fell on the house he was in a few months ago. They are currently living in grim straits in Jordan, as the UN has run out of money to support refugees there. They all speak some English.

We have been filling out forms. There are so many forms! But when they’re done, which we hope will be in a week or so, we submit them to the CUC and then we wait, for some period of time between two weeks and six months. Then we get 48 hours notice that the Alm.'s are arriving, and we go into high gear. But the uncertainty in time lines has challenges: we can’t really rent any place, as we might have to pay rent for six months before they arrive. Clothing collection? For February or July? We just don’t know.

But you can help by signing up for responsibilities you’re willing to take on. And please, add your comments (or write posts) here, on this blog. 

It’s December 11th, 2015. The Neighbourhood Unitarian Universalist Congregation (aka NUUC) has raised almost $30,000 to support a Syrian refugee family. This blog will serve to allow sharing of our experience as this journey progresses.

We don’t yet know who our family will be, or how long the process of getting them here will take. But it has already been hugely exciting to see how the community has come together to offer support and money for this project.

It’s our hope that there will be many voices on this blog, as different people share their experiences.