How best to support Syrian refugees arriving in Canada?

Paladin1 wrote:

 

 

My only concern is that the clothes won't end up in the hands of the landed refugees au gratis but in some thrift shop for sale.

 

Any suggestions on how to get food and clothing to them directly?

Don't donate to the Salvation Army.

[url=https://www.facebook.com/25000tuques/]25,000 tuques[/url]

In French, but google for English equivalents. Or facebook will do a bad translation if you like.

Clothes donations need to be matched to arriving families - giving them to a shop that will sell and dedicate the funds to a refugee family might actually be more efficient in soem cases. Some families might need a crib; others clothes for chidlren only; others clothes for adults only; others books. 

Funds to pay language exchange teachers - locally we are being asked for people fluent in both French and Arabic to volunteer but time of such people can be limited. 

Funds to help pay legal fees - which refugee families do in fact face on some occasions. (Though mercifully they will be covered for their health care costs - an exemption from the Harper cuts to healthc are for refugees.) There will be a local NGO or church that is involved in most communities and can assist in directing donations, as said above. 

Longer-term joining a local settlement assistance group. The most successful refugee settlement programmes in my view were the Vietnamese and more recently Tibetan ones, which linked each arriving person or family to a small group of local people who could assist directly and be in fellowship. 

There are unfortunately lots of underemployed and highly qualified French and Arabic speakers in Montréal. Yes, many speak Maghrebi Arabic, and the dialects spoken by "ordinary people" in the Arab-speaking world are as different from each others as say, some Romance or West Germanic languages, but educated people learn "standard modern Arabic" - what the TV and radion newsreaders speak.

Yes, clothing needs include unworn undergarments for men, women and children, socks, shoes and boots as well as the more popular winter coats, pullovers and such. People will also need clean mattresses as soon as they are in some kind of apartment. The bedbug problem in cities has made furniture donations more problematic than before.

Government Hotel Bill For Syrian Refugees Expected to Near $80 Million By March

http://www.canada.com/news/national/government+hotel+bill+refugees+expec...

http://storage.torontosun.com/v1/dynamic_resize/sws_path/suns-prod-image...

Here in Montréal, the city has an open line (info-références) for people wishing to provide aid (in-kind donations or money) 514.527.6951

You can find many groups involved in support to refugees and immigrants at this website: http://tcri.qc.ca/ Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes

Obviously, we must not forget support to other refugees (groups or individuals) arriving here.

NPDD, any federal government figure for such an initiative will look huge to the average person. That is not a huge amount in terms of federal budgets.

quizzical wrote:

start a go fund me page to help them pay off the transportation bills the Liberals are sending them.

[same comment I made in another thread - maybe someone here knows the full answer:]

I think refugees have been handed a transportation bill for years - and the Liberals cancelled that for Syrian refugees arriving after they took power (November 4).

I could be wrong about that.