new beginnings
REFUGEE MINISTRY OFFICE UPDATES
Winter, 2024 | Subscribe here
Dear Friend,
The Advent/Christmas season is a particularly resonant time to reflect on the plight of refugees and the call to be or service to them. Jesus – born in Bethlehem – would soon with his parents flee to Egypt narrowly escaping the horrendous, murderous regime of King Herod. As a child, Jesus was a refugee. As an adult, during his public ministry, he called us to welcome the stranger. This call to welcome and extend hospitality to strangers is a recurrent biblical theme that we share with many other faith traditions. While there are certainly always strangers in our midst, the welcoming of a newcomer into a land is an especially honourable way of welcoming a stranger. In doing so, we provide support, safety, and a home to people who have no one to turn to in a time of desperate need.
In this issue of New Beginnings, we are highlighting refugee sponsorship through the Bended Visa Office-Referred (BVOR) program. The BVOR program is part of the Private Sponsorship of Refugees that is administered through Sponsorship Agreed Holders such as our own Refugee Ministry Office (RMO). While many of our RMO sponsorships reunite refugees with family members already in Canada, the BVOR program is especially focused on sponsorship of those who have no familial support. It is very literally an exercise in welcoming a stranger in tremendous need.
As we look to the new year, we are asking those interested in refugee sponsorship to consider participating in the BVOR program. In this issue you will read about the BVOR program in general, the BVOR Blitz of 2018, a recent BVOR sponsorship by Deep River Welcome, and the benefits and challenges of BVOR sponsorship. We hope that in reading this issue you may be led to pursuing a BVOR sponsorship.
As always, please share this issue of New Beginnings with friends, family and colleagues – encouraging them to subscribe. Thank you for your ongoing support of the Refugee Ministry Office. May this Advent/Christmas season be a time of joy, reflection, rest and renewal amid lives called to service and welcome.
PJ Hobbs
Director General of Community Ministries
To support the Refugee Ministry Office financially, you can contribute through this link on our website or by writing a cheque to the Refugee Ministry Office, Anglican Diocese of Ottawa, 71 Bronson Ave, Ottawa, ON K1R 6G6. Your contribution would be greatly appreciated.
This issue’s featured stories include:
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Welcoming the Stranger – BVOR Refugee Sponsorship
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Is a BVOR Sponsorship the Right Choice for You?
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A Newcomer Success Story
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Deep River Welcome Experiences Success With BVOR Sponsorships
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ADO and its partners excelled during the BVOR Blitz
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Rally to Support Newcomer Reception Centres
Welcoming the Stranger – BVOR Refugee Sponsorship
The Blended Visa Office-Referred Program (BVOR) helps to resettle refugees identified by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). BVOR refugees have been living in unsafe situations, often for many years, with little hope of a secure future. Reasons they need resettlement include:
- Women at Risk
- LGBTQI or Diverse Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity Expression (SOGIE) Persecution
- Religious or Ethnic Minorities
- Displacement due to War or Conflict
- Political Opinion
- Human Rights Defenders
Like all sponsorships, the Constituent Group is responsible for providing settlement and emotional support for the newcomers for a full year. The financial costs of the sponsorship are shared with IRCC who provides up to six months of income support while the CG covers the start-up costs and another six months of financial support.
Please consider a BVOR sponsorship as it exemplifies an essential part of our Christian faith – welcoming the stranger.
Is a BVOR Sponsorship the Right Choice for You?
The Blended Visa Office-Referred (BVOR) sponsorship program was initiated by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) in August 2018. Designed to attract first-time sponsors, the program offers several appealing features to lessen both the administrative and financial burdens of sponsorship.
The BVOR program streamlines the entire application and approval process, eliminating years of wait times. This is a huge boon to sponsors who want to attract volunteers who can remain committed throughout the span of the sponsorship. It also removes the emotional toll that sponsors assume during a protracted wait for newcomers to arrive.
Preparing an application for a named sponsorship is complex and time-consuming. With BVOR, the required paperwork is minimal: just a settlement plan and proof of sufficient financial resources. The newcomers are travel-ready and usually arrive within 6-12 weeks of a sponsorship’s approval.
Eliminating the requirement to complete the full application form, and then wait through the lengthy approval process, is very appealing. But it does, however, remove the opportunity to acquire a fuller picture of the applicants’ backgrounds. Limited information is offered on BVOR listings: just the basic details such as country of origin, applicants’ ages, and perhaps minimal descriptions of education and language skills.
And surprises may occur. The most challenging is when the newcomers have not been told before arriving in Canada that they actually have a sponsorship group! A happy surprise can be that a newcomer has much more English or French than was indicated.
Another significant challenge is the time that must be spent building a trusting relationship in the initial stages of sponsorship. Sponsors must allow the newcomer to share their hopes and needs, and this needs trust on both sides. Also, some BVOR newcomers have greater settlement needs than had been shared. Often there are no local family members or acquaintances to soften their transition to Canadian life. No local family also means less help with translation and other settlement tasks.
A third challenge is around money and start-up costs. The BVOR newcomers may have compared settlement stories with government sponsored refugees. GSR’s are given a lump sum of money to cover their start-up, in lieu of any in-kind donations. This can lead to misunderstandings and an erosion of trust when the newcomers realize that, for example, they will receive donated furniture instead of money to buy their own. Sponsors need to be aware of this pitfall and to explain this clearly.
For the sponsoring group, a significant advantage of the BVOR program is that the cost of the sponsorship is shared with the government. The details of this cost-sharing offer significant savings to sponsors, meaning much less fundraising.
The BVOR program has benefits that far outweigh the challenges. The sponsors provide significant settlement support and are deeply rewarded knowing they have helped an individual or family who likely would have had no other path to resettlement in Canada.
A Newcomer Success Story
Bytown Torahib Bikom (Bytown Welcomes You in Arabic) is a refugee sponsorship group that has welcomed three families to Ottawa through the Anglican Diocese in the last eight years.
Its most recent sponsorship is a young Syrian family who landed in late October 2022. Mustafa and Abeer Al Assaf arrived with their three children who were three, 10 and 13-years old.
“The family had been living in a refugee enclave in Beirut, Lebanon since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2012. Abeer’s sister Farah was already in Canada, and she urged us to bring them safety,” remembers sponsor Luci Cipera.
“Our group helped find them a townhome close to Farah and her family. The children attend the same school with their cousins and have made many friends. They love to tell us about their favourite subjects and other stories about their day at school.”
Abeer’s husband Mustafa is a skilled upholsterer, and he found work soon after they arrived with an upholstery company, Wael Upholstery, which was started by another Syrian newcomer.
The sponsorship has been a roller coaster of hard work, frustration with the housing shortage in Ottawa, but most of all an incredible experience to make new friends and help the family make a fresh start in Canada. This extended family has formed a community here in Ottawa.
They have learned English, found work and their children are thriving at school.
“They have learned to love our winters, or so they say, when we introduced them to winter activities like tobogganing. And best of all, this past winter they welcomed two new babies, cousins, who will grow up as part of our extended family,” says Luci.
Deep River Welcome Experiences Success With BVOR Sponsorships
The town of Deep River is located along Highway 17, about halfway between Ottawa and North Bay. It is a community of approximately 4,500 people. People come from all over the world to work at the nearby Canadian Nuclear Laboratories facility and to enjoy the quiet natural setting of the Upper Ottawa Valley.
In autumn 2015, in response to the growing need for refugee sponsorship, residents of Deep River gathered to discuss how the community could become involved in refugee sponsorship. It was quickly understood that three local faith communities were well situated to organize the efforts needed for an upcoming sponsorship. Two churches and the local Islamic centre began working together and the partnership became known as Deep River Welcome.
Because the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa is a Sponsorship Agreement Holder (SAH) with the Canadian government, the proposed sponsorship would be channelled through that process. Not knowing any specific families in need of resettlement, the group decided to apply for a Blended Visa Office Referred (BVOR) sponsorship opportunity. Deep River Welcome was attracted by the opportunity to share the cost of the sponsorship with the Canadian government, a shorter timeline for the family’s arrival, and the possibility of offering a new life to a family who would be in urgent need of resettlement.
Over the next few months, several community events took place to raise funds, spread awareness, and recruit volunteers. In winter 2026, the family arrived and were met at the airport by representatives of Deep River Welcome. The family continues to live in the area and has become an important part of the Deep River community.
In winter 2021 members of the three faith communities began talking about the possibility of sponsoring another family. Although community engagement was not at the same level as it had been in 2015, several people came forward and Deep River Welcome was re-launched. With the administrative support and coaching expertise of the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa’s Refugee Ministry, Deep River Welcome felt empowered and able to take on the challenge of sponsoring another family. Almost a year later, in Autumn 2021, a second family arrived and has settled in the community.
Last year, the Deep River Welcome leadership was approached by a member of the community with a request for assistance in sponsoring members of their extended family to come to Canada. The family has left their home country because of war and is currently living under unsuitable conditions. Because they are registered as refugees with the United Nations, Deep River Welcome reached out to the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa to enquire about options for sponsorship. This will be a slightly different sponsorship experience because the family’s situation is known to the sponsors. The process for private sponsorship takes a long time but Deep River Welcome hoping to hear soon about when the family will arrive in our community. We eagerly await the opportunity to share in the reunification of family members and the welcoming of new neighbours.
ADO and its partners excelled during the BVOR Blitz
The 2018 “BVOR Blitz” marked a new collaboration in refugee sponsorship in which the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa (ADO) and its partners took a leadership role. In a frantic four-month period, they organized information sessions, identified and vetted sponsors, matched them with refugees, applied for funding, and fielded hundreds of questions as sponsors settled the refugees in new homes.
The Blitz was a special effort when it appeared hundreds of refugee sponsorship places might expire, unused, at year end. Through combined efforts and quick action, 668 refugees – 175 refugee families – settled in 49 Canadian cities and towns in a matter of months.
Under the BVOR (Bended Visa Office-Referred) Blitz program, the ADO helped to bring 135 individuals to safety and new homes in Ottawa in 2018. That number was about 20 percent of all BVOR sponsorships across Canada during the Blitz. It was accomplished in addition to the 44 regular refugee sponsorships the ADO submitted for 88 individuals that year.
“It was an exciting time with 15-hour days, often seven days a week,” recalls Joyce Couvrette who staffed the ADO’s Refugee Ministry during that time alongside Don Smith, a retired rocket scientist and full-time Refugee Ministry volunteer.
“We couldn’t have done it without our partners at Jewish Family Services and the University of Ottawa Refugee Hub, or without the additional contribution from generous benefactors,” says Joyce.
As the Trudeau government looked for ways to meet refugee targets in 2018, it promoted the BVOR program which offered key benefits of cost-sharing with government and accelerating arrivals.
Under the program, sponsors could consider individuals and families chosen and vetted by the Canadian government from a list of refugees the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) promoted for resettlement. The refugees were, as a result, travel ready and could arrive quickly versus the long processing times for regular sponsorships, a great advantage for eager sponsors. The government paid half the monthly costs of the one-year sponsorship, and the sponsors were responsible for the other half and the start-up costs, such as furniture, housewares and clothing.
It was an attractive proposal, but many sponsorship groups, and the public, were tired of fundraising after contributing so generously to resettling Syrians during the “Syrian Wave” that started in 2015-2016. Other groups were busy with current sponsorships.
By early August 2018, only 300 BVORs had been sponsored, despite funding for 1,500 BVOR spots. Hence the need for the BVOR Blitz.
The situation turned around quickly thanks to the generous and timely BVOR Fund set up by The Shapiro and Giustra Foundations which pledged a further $3.5 million in settlement costs. Ed Shapiro is an American philanthropist who had been working with US refugee agencies and Frank Giustra is a Canadian businessman, mining financier and global philanthropist.
This additional funding meant sponsorship groups could focus on providing emotional and settlement support, rather than fundraising, with costs covered between the government and the BVOR fund.
Across Canada, the Blitz landed 668 BOVRs, but the ADO’s efforts with its partners stood out. The ADO sponsored significantly more BVOR refugees than any other Sponsorship Agreement Holder (SAH) in the country during the “Blitz” by a large margin – a feat made possible because of close collaboration with the U of O Refugee Hub, Jewish Family Services and Refugee 613.
Rally to Support Newcomer Reception Centres
Hundreds of concerned citizens rallied on Sunday, November 17 in support of Ottawa’s proposed reception centres for refugee claimants.
Organized by Refugee 613, the rally included speeches from Ottawa’s mayor Mark Sutcliffe, and two former refugee claimants who have gone on to start businesses in the city. They praised the city for planning the new shelters with the needs of asylum seekers in mind and for collaborating with those providing services to newcomers.
“The city is actually making a thoughtful, innovative, brave choice to really stand by our welcoming values and invest in a system where there is none,” said Louisa Taylor, executive director of Refugee 613.
“Is the plan perfect? No. It’s still being developed. But they’ve made it clear that they are genuinely interested in a collaboration to co-design services.”
Two Newcomer Reception Centres will be the first point of contact for refugee claimants. They will offer meals, semi-private rooms, and social services such as job search help on-site guiding refugee claimants through the first steps of starting life in Canada.
Today, many claimants are currently sleeping in Ottawa’s overcrowded shelter system, which is geared to homeless people dealing with a different range of issues, including poor mental health and addiction. Another 300 claimants have been housed in community centres. The funding for new claimant centres will not take funding away from the existing homeless shelters.
The new centres will also deal with an anticipated wave of asylum seekers from the United States. President-elect Donald Trump has announced that once in office, he will create vast detention centres for asylum seekers and implement mass deportations.
The first centre is planned next to the Nepean Sportsplex, and a secondary site near the Eagleson Park and Ride in Kanata may also be developed.
About the Refugee Ministry Office (RMO):The mission of the RMO is to collaborate with community partners to bring refugees to safety in Canada, supporting them to become confident members of our society. We review and file refugee applications, provide guidance to our community partners, and monitor the experience of refugees in their first year in Canada. In addition, we advocate for individual refugee cases and with others seek to reduce barriers to refugee sponsorship. This is a ministry that is shared among many people, involving parishes, community groups, family members, and a key partnership with the Government of Canada. Learn more about the ADO Refugee Ministry Office. |
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