St. John’s Anglican Church Welcomes Refugee Family

The Cherif family experienced a family dinner at the home of St. John’s Ida congregation members John and Sylvia Amesbury during their first week in Canada.

On Tuesday, September 13^th, three cars waited at Pearson International Airport to shuttle the eight members of the Cherif family to their first Canadian home: the Fleming College residence which currently provides temporary housing to newly arrived refugees to the Peterborough area. It had been a long journey from the Ivory Coast where the parents had lived as refugees since fleeing Liberia in 1990. While these days we think of refugees arriving from Syria, there are many other countries with long line-ups of refugees seeking asylum in the west. In fact, according to the UN, there are currently over 19 million refugees and 60 million displaced people in the world at this time.

To be called a refugee, a person must have fled their home country to escape persecution and cannot safely return home. They may be targets due to their race, religion, political views or due to membership in a persecuted social group, and have been forced to move in order to save their lives or preserve their freedom. People who flee due to a natural disaster or to improve their economic circumstances are not considered refugees.

The patriarch of the Cherif family is 48 year old Amadore, who lost a hand in the vicious Liberian Civil War which ran from 1989 to 2003 and saw vicious civilian armies led by ruthless warlords killing 250,000 citizens and leaving many others surviving violent attacks. Cherif fled to the neighbouring Ivory Coast, leaving behind most of his family members. Viola Watkins made a similar journey, bringing two daughters but leaving her mother and sisters behind in the chaos. The couple met as refugees in the Ivory Coast, and eventually formed a blended family with five children and a grandson who have accompanied them to start a new life in Canada.

During their first few years in the Ivory Coast, they lived as refugees in a UN camp, but when civil war ended, the camp was disbanded and Liberians were told to return to their homeland. Amadore and Viola did not believe it was safe to go home, and waited for an opportunity to relocate elsewhere. Their wait lasted 16 years, when they finally saw their names posted on a notice board saying they had been approved to move to Canada. Liberian natives were never accepted as citizens in the Ivory Coast; they were not allowed to integrate, so their children did not attend local public schools, they were not welcome in the workplace so resorted to occasional work such as harvesting and selling firewood or acting as street vendors in order to support themselves.

The path for refugees like the Cherif family to a new Canadian home is controlled by three major organizations. The first stop usually occurs through an agency of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which co-ordinates international efforts to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems worldwide. Some refugees find public support through the Federal Government, which facilitates the arrival of immigrants directly through public sponsorship, and provides programming to help newcomers settle in Canada through Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC). Others come to Canada through private sponsorship with one of the 85 private groups across the country that helps resettle refugees to Canada. This process has been formalized through a federal government initiative called the Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program (PSR). This is the fourth largest resettlement program in the world and the only one that allows private citizens to help refugees directly through the resettlement process. The group consists of local churches and community groups who work independently to find safe places for refugees to live in Canada who commit to providing assistance and support to refugees usually for their first year of life in Canada and beyond. St. John’s Anglican Church relied on the Anglican charitable organization called AURA to sponsor the Cherif family.

For the next year, the Cherif family will live in a house on Brioux Street in Peterborough funded and furnished with local donations. It is within walking distance to the New Canadians Centre, where they will find the screening and support to start their new journey. All but one year old Favor Winon will find their way to school of some description, to firm up their English and secure an Ontario High School equivalency certificate and identify their next steps in their formal education. There are many challenges ahead, but there are also many sources of support. As one of the few countries providing resettlement to thousands of refugees each year, Canada is a leader in refugee support. They have demonstrated an incredible ability to absorb refugees, having admitted over 110,000 Vietnamese “Boat People” in the six years after the Viet Nam War. Besides, the folks at St. John’s have done this before: four years ago the congregation sponsored a refugee family from Iraq. Arriving with no English, the family soon became socially and financially independent and last fall relocated to Toronto where the father had secured a full time job in his field. The congregation is looking for a repeat performance with the Cherif family. KG