In September, the world was shocked and horrified by images of the small dead body of Aylan Kurdi, the 3-year-old Syrian boy who drowned with his mother, Rehana, and brother, Galib, as they tried to flee from Syria via Turkey to Europe, hoping eventually to end up in Vancouver. There were the to-be-expected reactions, people who felt it was inappropriate to publish images of dead children, people who wrung their hands and said “What is the world coming to?”, and I’m sure there were many people who also felt that this problem was much too big for me to handle and nothing will change so I’m just going to forget about this and move on with problems I can solve.
But for some reason, the photos of this dead child, and the fact that his family had been trying to reach Canada for years, really galvanized many people. For me, it began with a dinner conversation with my husband, asking each other if there was anything we could do to help make sure that there are no more photos of dead babies washing up on the shores. We knew we couldn’t do anything on our own, as much as we wanted to. So we decided to call a Town Meeting, open to the public, to see if there was anyone else in our town who felt the same way we did, and to see if we might work together to offer a refugee Syrian family a new home and new hope.
We have lived in this small town of 5500 people (plus 2200 university students) for 22 years, and we know that there are many gracious, warm-hearted, generous people living here. We hoped that perhaps there might be 40 or 50 people who would show up. In reality, we expected about 25. After all, people are busy raising children, volunteering, working at their careers, and a myriad of other things. We hoped that maybe, with a small group of people, we might be able to raise enough money over several months to eventually bring a family to our town.
The meeting was called for a Sunday night in late September. Almost 100 people showed up, and another dozen or so contacted us to say that they were unable to attend but they wanted to help. At the end of that meeting, which included information about the Syrian situation and refugee sponsorship, the gathered community members were asked to consider 3 questions: Is sponsoring a family in Sackville the right way to proceed? Do we have here and beyond, the collective will to support a family? And if yes, should we form a Steering Committee?
I waited with bated breath as the crowd contemplated and discussed these questions in small groups. And then my husband asked the group to reassemble, and the answers were given. Each question received an overwhelming and resounding “yes.” And that’s not all. The crowd enthusiastically endorsed consideration of sponsoring not just one family, but two or maybe even three.
Shortly after, the Steering Group was organized, with my husband as Chair, and me as a member, and we got things underway to figure out how to finance and support a refugee family. The Steering Committee has met weekly, we have held two additional public meetings, and several working groups have been formed and tasked with specific responsibilities such as fundraising, communications, housing, welcoming and orientation, to name a few. At the moment, we have almost 100 people actively working on those committees, with more people becoming involved every day.
Two months later, we have raised enough money to submit our first application, and almost certainly by the end of the year, we will have enough for a second application.
This in itself isn’t overly remarkable. In many other small towns in Canada and probably elsewhere in the world, similar things are happening.
We live in a small university town. While our students and our townspeople generally get along well, it is fair to say that there has been a bit of a rocky history between Town and Gown in recent years. The university is a major employer and the professors are largely CFAs (Come From Aways) and have a higher level of education than the average townie. Occasionally, this causes some resentment, although townspeople are quick to admit that the town benefits in many ways by having the university here. Because the university is full of experts and scholars, sometimes projects which are supposed to be collaborative turn into projects that are highly directed and influenced by the university.
So when we decided to host our first public meeting, at the University Chapel, we wanted to make sure that we emphasized from the first minute that although we were hoping the university community and the University itself would be active and engaged participants, this was not meant to be a University Project. If it was to succeed, it would have to be a truly collaborative venture involving many different aspects of the town.
In that context, one of the things that makes this coalition so remarkable is the high degree of collaboration, excitement, and dare I say, even camaraderie within our community. Almost everyone wants to participate, to “do their bit,” to the point that people have spotted my husband walking in town and pulled over in their cars so they could jump out and volunteer for something. Our committees have ordinary folks from the town working side by side with university administrators, students working with clergy, retired folks working with young professionals, professors working with store clerks. This level of collaboration is, I believe, practically unheard in our town.
Another thing that moves me is just how many people with specific skills have volunteered to participate. A retired quartermaster is helping head up the committee responsible for collecting, organizing and storing household items. How great is that? Freelance journalists and writers have volunteered to organize communications. Artists have designed wordmarks to make our name immediately recognizable and produced cards and letterhead for us to use. A number of Arabic speakers have volunteered their translation services. Who knew there would be more than one Arabic speaker in a small Maritime town?? One of the people on our Steering Committee has just recently retired from a career working with Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Her area of work? Helping process refugees.
My experience working on various committees is that they tend to be pretty insular. A committee is formed to work on a project, the ideas generally come from within that small group of people, and reports are made to Boards or to organizations or to bigger committees. There isn’t a lot of room for outsiders to actively participate unless they are specifically asked to do so by the committee, there’s not much opportunity for organic creativity from outside the committee. This coalition, however, has inspired brilliantly creative initiatives from a variety of groups and individuals. Our local Farmer’s Market, for example, recently had 100 canvas bags manufactured to promote the market. They decided to sell these bags for $20 each. That $20 will be turned into a $20 voucher for goods from the Farmer’s Market, and those vouchers will be turned over to our families for their use. The Market vendors’ reasoning is that not only will the Farmer’s Market benefit from having increased publicity, as you would expect, but also – and the fact that they so carefully considered these things really touched me – that the new families would be introduced to good, local, fresh food, and most importantly, would be immediately enabled to begin to form relationships, not only with the vendors, but also with regular market-goers. (And by the way, on their FIRST MORNING of sales, they sold 79 bags, and 4 days later, I hear there might not be any left).
Other community groups have donated freewill offerings to our coalition. A drama production commemorating Remembrance Day (our first influx of cash!) and a Christmas Concert by our local citizen’s band are only two examples. Sunday school children made cookies and sold them at the last Midnight Madness. Word is that the high school is holding a week long bake sale. The university library is donating its book fines. And the list goes on.
Individuals have made financial donations, big and small, and every dollar has helped. Others have donated time and resources. An expert knitter has volunteered to knit mittens and scarves, which will be much appreciated when our families arrive in the middle of a Canadian winter. Some of the football players from the university have volunteered to help move furniture when the time comes. People have volunteered to provide transportation, to care for children, to teach English and provide tutoring. A former university student, who is from Syria, wants to be here when our first family arrives. There are so many more examples of people filled with enthusiasm and goodwill, that it is truly overwhelming.
We do face challenges. We don’t know what situation our families will come from, whether they will be dealing with the aftermath of trauma and violence. We remind ourselves that they haven’t chosen to leave their homes, they simply didn’t have a choice; so while we are excited they are coming here, they will almost certainly have a mixture of feelings which includes sadness at the prospect of leaving their homeland forever. They might decide that they want to live in a bigger centre, with a mosque if they are Muslim, or a place with more ethnic diversity. And there are one or two citizens who are not happy to welcome refugee families, and they have gone out of their way to spread their ignorant bigotry to try to create hatred and fear in our town.
The good news is that the positives vastly outweigh the challenges. The negative responses have been so negligible and almost pathetic (really, only one person consistently, out of the entire town) that they have done nothing to dampen the spirits of the rest of the community (in fact, I think they have made some of us more determined than ever). And, as one of the Steering Committee members reminded us recently, these families are coming out of desperate situations. Whether they successfully integrate into our town, or somewhere else, our community has come together in this time and this place to give them the greatest gifts we can imagine – the gifts of hope, joy, peace and love, and most importantly, the gift of life. And that’s what this season of Advent, leading up to Christmas, is about.
I am beyond proud of our town, of the generosity of spirit and the commitment being shown to people who so far, remain perfect strangers. I am exceedingly grateful to be a small part of this overwhelming, exciting experience, which will be life-changing not only for our new families, but also, I’ll wager, for the rest of us.
For me, this is true Christian hospitality, a gift that invites people to come in, simply because they are God’s people. We invite them in because they have needs, and we can provide assistance; and we invite them in also recognizing that we might be changed by them, by our encounter with them, and that the divide of “us” and “them” might itself be broken down.
I can’t wait to welcome our families in person.
