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Creating citizens: Refugee family and sponsorship group share lives and cultures

A local interfaith group looks back on a year of sponsoring a Syrian family.
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Members of the Interfaith Refugee Project meet to discuss the family they've been sponsoring.

Before the driving lessons, the laundry talk, the lamb, the dogs, and the new baby, there was a meeting.

Late in January of 2016, nine Abbotsford residents stood in the arrivals area of Vancouver International Airport preparing to greet a family they had never spoken with or met but yet had pledged to support financially and otherwise for the next year.

The residents were members of the local Interfaith Refugee Project, a group of likeminded men and women who had raised thousands of dollars to sponsor a family of Syrian refugees. Meanwhile, the family – a young couple and their infant daughter – had been told just days earlier that they had been selected to move halfway across the world.

At the airport, the group bore signs. The family carried their lives' possessions. Thousands of such meetings took place last winter and spring across the country, with sponsor groups meeting unknown refugees with widely varying backgrounds and education levels.

The Abbotsford group soon learned that their sponsored family was religiously devout and from a small town. (The family politely declined to speak for this article, and The News won't be using their names here to protect their privacy.) But while some refugees arriving from Syria have been unable to read, or lack the technology and financial skills that are key in Canada, that wasn't the case for either the father the mother, both of whom, while not speaking much English, had university backgrounds.

The group had raised enough money to support the family. But clearly, the financial aspect was just a tiny part of what it meant to sponsor three refugees from another part of the world.

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The sponsors knew they needed to help integrate their family into their new home – a task they were assisted in by the local Muslim community, and by the Mennonite Central Committee. But doing so wasn't a one-way street; the group had sprung from the Abbotsford Interfaith Movement, which aims to broaden cross-faith dialogue, and so perhaps it was not entirely surprising that last spring you could find Lynn Gamache and Don Strangway driving with the father out to a place in Langley to choose a sheep. In particular, they were there to select an animal to be slaughtered, butchered and later cooked over wood according to halal traditions for a meal to mark Ramadan.

"It was quite an eyeopener," said Strangway.

The learning went the other way too, of course. There were driving lessons for Mohammad, explanations of washing laundry in a communal facility, and dinners, medical and dental appointments, and all the other things that go into trying to help a family feel at home in a new place, with new customs.

Six months in, Gamache asked the pair about what they liked and didn't like about their new home. The mother mentioned the friendliness and kindness of the people, Mohammad pointed to nature. When asked about the worst aspect, both pointed to the ubiquity of roaming, infant-sniffing canines in Canada.

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The group was focused on their family, but members also said the experience was bringing them closer together.

"It's been a time of fellowship, in sharing our lives with their lives, it's been a very enriching time," said Arlene Kropp.

On an icy January morning, around a dozen members of the project gathered around tables laid out in a square at Gladwin Heights United Church. This was a normal meeting, except for the brief appearance of a reporter.

Later that month, the group would hold a potluck celebration to mark the family's one-year anniversary in Canada. The anniversary was more than just an upcoming day on a calendar: it marked the end of the group's financial support for the family.

And so, an agenda had been laid out, with reports on a variety of issues the group would try to address prior to setting the family on their way in the coming weeks.

The next month would be a busy one for the family: in late February, they welcomed a new baby girl into the world, and the father would be completing a security guard training, continue his English studies, and consider various job options. Just two courses short of his economics degree when he was forced to flee Syria, Mohammad is hoping to return to university to finish his studies.

And after a year learning and helping, Strangway is optimistic about the coming years for the family he and his group brought to Canada.

"Undoubtably, in the long term, [Mohammad] will be a valuable contributing citizen to Canadian Society," Strangway would later say. "We will continue our friendship with the family but, essentially, they are now independent."

Meanwhile, the group themselves have discussed their future plans. More immediately, though, they are also looking to distribute excess funds raised over the past year, with an eye possibly on paying for swimming lessons for the dozens of refugee children that arrived last year in Abbotsford.