program on sustainability i'm suzanne gregory be coordinating producer live in the studio once again after a bit of a change for the last few months and marjorie stewart is here good morning margery good morning sound and you have a guest who's well known to changes listeners because she has actually been a host on this you've been involved with us a whole bunch of times on the show but i will marjorie i'll let you introduce her well we have with us samantha latoya no who's known to many people locally and what i want samantha to do today thank you for joining us samantha is to outline for us her special job with the central vancouver they're recent refugees that have come here or new immigrants or temporary foreign workers or whatever they may be classified in helping them settle in the community there's a subsidiary question here that just popped into my head there's a new comer scrub in and imo who they work with i have no idea i think it's a social group ok so that might be worth exploring to find out what their their mandate is so you are dealing precisely with the question that suzanne and i were interested in today which is how's it going how's the whole thing going and and before we even start the word syria i don't think many people really know what they're yeah and i don't know if i am none of us do able to encapsulate exactly what has happened in syria i mean it's  a very basic level it's an area of severe conflict where people have been forced to flee their homes i mean there are still people in syria but yeah they're not living a normal life no no no and even those that have fled to turkey lebanon or jordan where there are refugee camps these aren't safe areas either so these are not refugees who had much choice their backs to the wall were there to the cliff a refugee never has a choice you know you're fleeing for your family's life your your fleeing to get out of a war torn country and you have to leave everything that you know and care about and the history which is being destroyed as we speak i just want to throw in a few of the actors in syria the whole horrible combination of islamic state is terrorizing there there are other terrorist rebel groups there interaction which means that we're all drone in our federal taxes they're gone and we are responsible and here they are on our doorstep for the first time in a long time and the last time we didn't do too well when the jews were on our doorstep did canada has a bad rep or you the people of world imo are hoping to turn that around you're referring to world war two when the ships were turned away the j from yeah i mean there was a sick example but the real deal is the country is refused the jews during world war and some of them went back to germany and yeah yeah yeah  that was you know we really have to look very closely at a lot of these situations and not just think that it came out of the blue as some sort of strange phenomenon that nobody has any responsibility for it just wanted to put that in place to look at the context why are we here why are they here what can we do about all of this what about world war one two when you were probably just going to mean you know now i think you're right on to it  britain and france messed around with the middle east to really terribly and it was just before everybody realized how important oil was going to be but it was always about oil it's always supposed to so here we are we we have refugees coming in tonight which is an opportunity for us to practice our community humanity how are they welcomed how are they welcomed by the community or by the society i mean how they're welcomed by the community i can't really answer except in general i think there's been a positive response from the community and within the society we are mandated to support refugees that come here in providing you know many things whether they're privately sponsored or government assisted refugees i think also people need to understand that once people don't like to be referred to as refugees and once they come to canada they are no longer a refugee they're a permanent resident meaning they have the same rights as any canadian citizen except they can't vote and so that that title they don't want it's right yeah yeah not not on not that supports or settlement services to work with all all types of new comers and it is a flexible funding in other words has it got a broad general address the question of helping to these people to settle or does it sort of get targeted and tied to specific activities of federal funding is much more specific and how funds can be used and in regards to specifically assisting them in in finding accommodation registering them for school all those sort of things that you need to feel connected to your community with the registering for school i know there's been a fair amount of what w and so that's for adults and they attend on a regular basis and also the summer we put in summer english classes which we haven't done before but to help in particular the syrians but it but any student that wants to further pursue their english skills so that they can keep them fresh and keep moving forward with it and then there are supports within the school district themselves to help children tell us a little bit about the difference between private  sponsored and government sponsored so a privately sponsored refugee has a so how does this work ok so the first thing that would happen is that a group of five or more would decide that they would want to sponsor a family then you know unfortunately we don't just have refugees in syria we have refugees from eritrea we have refugees from all over the world kenya has one of the largest refugee camps in the in the world so a group would decide you know maybe i want to sponsor a family from my mar or syria or wherever and then they need to connect with what's called the sponsorship agreement holder and usually well that could be sometimes a faith based organization but you don't have to belong to that faith to approach them or it can be a not for profit organization such as the intercultural association in victoria is a sponsorship agreement holder and they help the private sponsorship group understand what their role is and what their commitment will be when the family arrives so that includes emotional social and financial support for up to a year for a family and then they would the sponsorship agreement holder would work with them in providing training and doing their application with for sponsoring a family and really helps guide that private  sponsorship group government assisted refugees totally different basically they are given what's equivalent to income assistance to live off of when they come to canada from the government and we the multicultural society or other settlement services become their main support so instead of the groups which have become involved and made a commitment a fairly wide commitment for at least a year you just have the programs will support and yeah and they get a monthly allowance like i said that's equivalent to income assistance with whatever province they go to and they will get that support for a year but there isn't the same high in them supporting them however back to your original question of how is the community welcomed them we have seen community members come forward and also want to support the government assisted refugees yeah well it's  it's certainly a huge issue and have you seen any any blowback any feedback that is is unwelcoming the only you know every once in a while i'll hear comments or if i've gone out to do training i'll hear comments from people saying but what about homeless people here that we need to take care of what about you know looking at the social issues that already exist here in should we be putting money into that the charity begins at home yeah yeah so that's something i'll hear but in general i would say nine has been a really welcoming community i have that sort of sensation to what are some of the reactions that refugees people clients it we would have it weird we can come up with our new friends are showing to just being in this community on this island can you repeat that well there must be a whole sort of range of of responses like here i am i'm on an island quite small there are not a lot of people here is ferry beautiful you need money to do what people in amman need to understand is there's still really in that process of trying to settle here many of them have family members still in lebanon or jordan that have not come with them and that is really their primary focus of how are they going to get their children here but the they are very grateful and you know if anything incredibly resilient i imagine they would have to be yeah because  it must be drawing on adrenaline at a moment of a physical crisis drawing on your own stores of resilience and i imagine a lot of the people apart from the indigenous people who have come to canada have have had that kind of resilience to what what always crosses my mind what really upsets me is the fear that this is not necessarily a kindly place for people without an immediate source of money to show up and as parents we have that fear with us what is going to happen to our children our grandchildren if something happens to their source of income there just doesn't seem to be much in the way of safety net how is that working out for these recent immigrants well i think many of them have come here for their children and that's why they're here and they're very honest and direct in saying that it's and they're really wanting to have jobs and they're really wanting to rebuild their life for their children and that comes with a tremendous amount of stress when you are not fluent in the language maybe your skills of what you did in syria you're you're having to go through getting those credentials recognised in canada which we can't which we can help with our employment staff can assist with that or yeah that way of life is now gone gone and so it's a huge adjustment period and there's the learning curve this will list everything else yet what actually got me thinking about needing to get an update was the farmer's market oh yes yes they're obviously muslim and i spoke with the executive director there gen cody and said how do we get these families signed up for the p c coupon program and so with c v i medicine food share we've created this partnership and many of the families are accessing that to help stretch their food budget i think that's marvelous and i think they probably are better acquainted with outdoor markets than we are they're far more comfortable in shopping in that type of environment that's yeah instead of the big superstore which actually many of them will go to the super star because that's where they can find most of the haul product but yeah  markets are far more they're far more comfortable in going to a market and actually meeting the farmer and talking about the products etc and a lot less than a shoe to yes it is because one of my friends runs a chicken business a poultry business and she needs a new butcher and the way the poultry poaching where is it comes in you know periodically there's a reached a certain age and it's ready and she's also realizing the same time their respective say the syrian refugee immigrant there's a demand for help rota so first of all i think itself and yes so leading up like from how that animal is treated to the point of the animal being slaughtered all of that there is there's a process which i don't totally understand h quite complicated well i don't understand koshary there but there must be some sort of comparisons between different methods that we're not exactly and then the other thing is really knowing i mean so and with many of those that are vegetable oil that was used in the cooking what you know so there's all these little parts of it that are complicated well the other piece of the story of course is that it turns to one of the immigrant know he was a butcher in syria and obviously a successful one and earning well and here he is to his self esteem like everybody else better done by nobody understanding who you are and what you c do but it sounds like somebody has come forward with translation for to help him communicate with my friend the farmer who is a very concrete minded individual and needs a face to face so that  each understand their contract thing to do for each other yeah and many of the families that have come here come from a farming background well there's the split some came from very large urban areas in syria and some came my husband was raised on a farm coach in station and later became a teacher my dad was a village boy the eleventh of twelve children of the village but we're not that far removed although we don't understand how different life was just a generation or so ago whole my mother's family were farmers and my the specific connection had been made to needs and i think that's often overlooked when we have this sort of rather patronize saying attitude that we are going to condescend to help poor people and we forget how much they have to offer yes they have come from full and rich lives that was not their choice to leave their home and these are not babies you know they have a lot to offer to the community with enormous skills to share here i talked on the stuff that gets leno high school in the sixty's which is where i met my husband and one of our fellow stuff members i'm talking specifically one nine hundred fifty six my birthday oktober twenty third was the day of the hunger in revolution and an entire forestry department came from a university in hungary to u b c and on our staff one of that group there was a very highly educated very highly skilled one carrion lawyer and of course none of his credentials were recognised in canada rightfully enough because there's a whole different body of law for him to to assimilate but we have these experiences we've had this experience ever since settlers arrived in canada and we're still coming to grips with some of the interpersonal problems that turning up in somebody else's country resents so how long has this particular refugee program been operative when did syrian refugees for instance start arriving in tin and imo because it was quite an excitement when it started yes so they started to or i we had a few arrive i believe in january and then we had a canada and then came to new and imo so i imagine they must have some serious problems with depression yeah i mean generally people fleeing conflict like  there's a cycle and so there's there's the part where they come they arrive it's new it's exciting referred to that as the honeymoon phase so there's all this excitement this sense of now being able to breathe them feel safe and it kind of goes up and there's there's this happiness and then there's seems to be this dip that happens when actually reality well it's reality and it's the sense that now i am safe to feel these feelings that i have had bottled up for a long time and then you start to see these dips and you know depression can happen anxiety all kinds of mental health issues start to arise and we usually see that lake in the three to four month period i mean it doesn't follow this perfect wave but in a general spent sense speaking of refugees in a general way that's kind of the honeymoon phase and three to four month mark you see that drop in how they're feeling which could lead to depression anxiety many things and then as they work through that process they start to move back up to that idea of like ok i'm going to i'm going to be fine and i can get through this so  process have you observed yes i mean sometimes that there's a need for counseling many you know there's many different things sometimes it's you know counseling and physical activity connecting with someone that's maybe close to the rage a mentorship of some sort of family match of some sort something that helps them feel connected to where they're living and some friendships  friendships really important rights to that they're not feeling isolated what do you tell citizens have none i'm when they come forward full of enthusiasm to offer friendship well i mean we're open to that but i mean you know it if they if they want to work directly with us then we asked them to you know be part of our volunteer program which includes criminal record checks and because we have to think of the safety of the people that access our service there are subtle financial issue who picks up the tab for that well we're actually fortunate in that that's covered for us good so and so people that are volunteering don't have to pay for that criminal record because in many cases that that's about it yes and we just generally do when they do come in volunteer with us then we would go through cultural competency training with them and understanding of interacting with someone from a different culture and and so we know we do we do training and if it's someone in the community that chooses not to be part of our volunteer program well that's fine as well but you know it's hard for us to tell them what to do  it sometimes kind of nice to have a clean slate for some of these people one of the opportunities is maybe a new a new start sure sure so do they manage to get out of their as everybody is then some of them go out and about more than others how do they manage transportation well the use the bus i know people who wouldn't put on a pass and they're only about eighteen years old yet so yeah for many of them the use the bus the walk for a few of them the have invested in getting a vehicle and working on getting their license here so many ways maybe they could start their own car cool you know perhaps all of these things they just sort of seem to seem to make for us a reassessment of who we  are and what we have to offer were you surprised did you have surprises in this job from the people coming in how did they surprise surprise me you've got a lot of training center here's a question that system came up with here what do the people who are labeled refugees here in this community did they what did they think about refugee teams in the olympics saw that there was a well let's see it's interesting i actually read up on of the little bit there are only there were only two syrians actually it's a team of ten who were athletes i mean this is the thing they had this wasn't a favor to them exactly i mean they've qualified to be in the olympics but that you know they just play spirit and have a culture to represent so the olympic people to their huge credit i think came up with this idea to actually they did some trials and so on they had a large group of people and they whittled it down i guess you could say to ten people there were two syrians both swimmers and one was the woman that see i have her name here use martini who's the one who you saw her on television if you watch the olympics at all she's the one who was in a boat on the way to greece after leaving turkey i think she had she had competed for syria in the past when she was fourteen years old but she left syria it was in a boat the engine quit i guess and it started to take on water and she thought to herself i am a swimmer i can't let myself drone so she pushed the boat and its occupants to shore i mean she's eighty now yes her power she was yeah she was one of the competitors not one of the refugee team got medals none of them ended up on the podium but some of them i gather got seventh or eighth place and some of there in the world and which was amazing and they were all just absolutely thrilled and in rio there is a mural now with all of their faces on it big you know large size and so that's really quite quite special i think quite wonderful and half of them five or six of them were from that refugee camp in kenya that you mentioned earlier margery and  so there they had a big screen t v hooked up and then the middle of the night they were watching you know because it was apparently a six hour difference between brazil our rio anyway and they were keenly watching their people on television so it was an exciting thing one of the things i noticed as an immigrant to canada fifty years ago and it may well have been a prejudicial experience may have prejudged everything but what i noticed was that it's really difficult to get into national news in canada the same with the olympics it was quite hard a time heavy shape it was quite hard to get an overview of because everybody was busy talking about the canadian experience and i find the same thing to the state and i'm wondering how these full feel about media for instance it seems now to be here we are talking on radio and radio is having an upsurge since the podcast phenomenon but it seems now adays media is if you happen to have a smart phone or if you're watching television and how how do they feel about what's available where they get their information for instance yeah that's an interesting question i mean one of the good things about it imo is that we do have an islamic center here and the islamic center has been incredibly supportive with the syrians coming here and in accessing information  and and feeling connected in in that way and also the vancouver island regional library has been really i think quite sensitive to trying to have resources and newspapers of a veil bull for syrians and i was at a meeting prior to the families arriving with the bank ryan library and so all the way up from campbell river to here the librarians were brainstorming of how they could make sure to have media resources available for them from their from their country a lot of those who are tronic librarians who are very tech savvy yes yes and i imagine most of the people younger than me are and these people presumably where before they had to so they can be on facebook you know some of them i mean they can be accessing news outlets that aren't quite the same must open mail that could be interesting they could probably talk to people well i don't know about the refugee camps what's available there are but with sky poor google hangouts you can talk to people anywhere and yeah and many of them yes are able to be in contact with their family that are in camps and not all of them are in camps and you know some of them have stayed in cities in jordan or cities in lebanon which also comes with tremendous risk you know some of them went to the camps and left did not want to be there you know refugee camps are not necessarily a safe place to be no it's a it's a wholly different culture it is it's a temporary culture there forever yeah which is a contradiction in terms which leads to an awful lot of problems i understand yeah yeah and we certainly saw that with interest in to recent immigrants yes yeah most of them are now that doesn't mean to say that if we have other syrian families arrived that they will all be muslim but the ones that have currently arrived are well i do remember the big surprise i had when we had some of the boat people from vietnam coming first to fill a lot of had come from very rich backgrounds and missed missed their servants that was refugee surviving here but it's going to be over in five minutes that it's going to be over five minutes instant gratification we've we've got them everything's ok know yeah i think sometimes there's the assumption that someone coming from from that situation is is going to be immensely grateful to you for being here and i'm not saying that they aren't but there is also the reality that they are dealing with a lot and a lot of pressure and as i had said earlier they have family that still hasn't made it here that they are worried about and so there isn't necessarily this feeling of play oh i'm so incredibly grateful because there is so much tension in trying to get their family here safely tell us about some of the things you've noticed center has been able to well you know first of all they ramadan was just two months ago or a month ago so i'm i think june i can't remember actually but so that was incredibly helpful i mean as i said the majority that have come here a muslim and they were able to follow that their religious ceremony right so that the center was very helpful in building that connection with i think they were also offering conversation groups to help them further their english connecting them with others in the community so building that network and solidarity and really just making them feel comfortable now you're very active in the heart so what about outlets for their creativity yeah that's an interesting one organizations like crimson coast down society when they did their infringing dance festival were very open to helping them be able to attend events a lot of them really a lot of the children enjoy sports and in particular soccer so you know those are things were looking into getting them involved in soccer camps or playing soccer in school you know those would be some of the things i could  lot of people together and just then you only need one pole yeah two people yeah you know they're like most places in the world soccer is the main sport yes yes so they're there a lot of them are soccer players and with the women we've started well it's open to all of our women clients and knitting club and we hosted at the banker island library downtown it's totally free and we have coffee and treats there for them and they get together and net and some of the syrian women are amazing crochet oh yes yeah i am fine where yes phenomenal and and so this name circle has been really lovely and bring women from diverse cultures together and sharing and telling stories and knitting together and they could be some potential earnings there but again that's something that has to be operated explo but yeah i used to worry about more like a co operative you know social enterprise i used to worry about people making beautiful things and people here expecting to get missed cheaply is stuff that is cheap machine made and then i read a piece by a woman activist in latin america who said if it hadn't been for these nice american ladies who bought the tablecloths i crocheted i would never have got it from and i would never have been in the position i pay for the window of opportunity but  back to the soccer balls because global village imports fair trade so i was from pakistan which is the center of soccer ball sports ball making and it would be kind of neat to find  there is a year because nowadays here anyway so come in different for different age groups did you know that had no idea so it would be interesting to know from the soccer league people m your listeners supported campus and community station based in downtown and imo and also heard every where at c h o c a and i just quickly i'll mention that that knitting circles happens this afternoon from two to four at the riverfront library and the immigrant welcome center which is the same thing as this and i know and yes they at twelve fifteen today you are also having an elementary school info session and on thursday this week the twenty fifth at twelve fifteen it's a secondary school info session so maybe sam you could perhaps i'll just also mention as well that you are listening to changes and today margery stewart is talking with samantha lu tour know who is the settlement manager at the central vancouver island multicultural society or immigrant welcome center if you'd like to call it that and maybe you could tell us a bit more about those school info events so the per of the work of the settlement program is to provide information sessions for clients that use their services this one is done in partnership with the school district so a teacher from the school district will come and talk to the families about how to prepare their kids for elementary schools like what to expect with school supplies you should be purchasing right down to ideas that they can make for lunch for their kids and then the second one you mention was secondary school so kind of the same thing but more in preparing the parents for the change from elementary school to secondary school and and what that means ok and those both take place immigrant majority of our information sessions take place at the immigrant welcome center they have to people have to register and it is for clients that access our services so they know where it is an i noticed on the web site your website that it's possible to make a donation syrian refugee fund and the donations have been used for some interesting things like dentures bus passes for school aged children which is a good thing and bike helmets for children baby clothes and so on there must be some stories there like behind the dentures for example that well i mean the reality is that many of them need dental work and i am federal health and m s p do not cover expenses such as dentures or crowns or bridges or or other things like that so it's yeah it's incredibly important many of them have had to have some of their teeth pulled yet dental care in a refugee camp is minimal and depending on how long they've been in a camp so these are these are very concerning issues for for refugees when the come here and dental problems can impact a person's health another way oh yeah yeah that sort of mind or dental care legit care i don't care we have to protect  are a lot of attacks on them in this country which gets back to my in all countries which gets back to my my problem about if you're not already establish a new country could be a very cruel place to find yourself and i think that's what we're most concerned about but where we're starting to run a little short of time and before we do that i wanted to try and help people like me who are geographically challenged and i actually have a map in front of me which is purely physical geography so just for you to establish where these people are coming from they are actually on the mediterranean coast just above lebanon which is just about israel their biggest supporter is with turkey which is playing a very peculiar role in the syrian conflict and nobody seems to  turkey at the moment with anything their largest border is with iraq which has also been bombed into the stone age and where people are in the same desperate situation as the syrians are so we're talking about a mediterranean people who are part of the flow from those decisions that were made after world war one by leaders who didn't even know where they were what they did and sam's having a look at it we picked up this map also of where the largest numbers of syrian refugees and europeans in europe have ended up and it's quite graphic and into it is that the biggest circle is turkey yeah the biggest is turkey  and will be interesting to see what happens in the next little while in regards to the thought of syrians going to turkey i think we may see a change in them going more to lebanon and jordan and at the same thought for for humanitarian issues for tone so this whole question of refugee settlement is this may be just the beginning of huge thousand refugees and in the camps there and they have the palestinian camps which have been there forever yeah and that big one in kenya the largest refugee camp in the world and i can't remember how many it's millions  eastern has been convulsed for quite a few years and so on all sides yes and yet we never seem to do anything different we seem to pursue the same kinds of policies of  old let's get in there and change the regime and we've destroyed libya which was the oldest richest culture in africa it's done for we've been there have to rebuild we're rapidly destroying the amazing i mean how can we sit and watch national geographic movies about the amazing cultures of the middle east and at the same time be part of the people who are happily destroying them in the name of something that they call regime change which doesn't work yeah they never seem to learn you know politicians there i say maybe the last ones to learn the lessons of history what i like about our subject today is is the way that we're talking about community and how as community our job is not to resist people who are arriving but to try and figure out how best to fit the men because let's face it we're not going to build a wall we're not going to have to create a barrier between matt cooper island and the mainland when people show up our job our job is to accommodate and i don't mean accommodate for just for payment of large amounts of money which may or may not so yeah sensitivity something that i mentioned just before we went on the air today was that i had wondered whether the snow birds had cause to any trauma amongst the refugees particularly the children because to us that's entertainment imagine military jets being entertainment fans yeah to hell and i don't think it's just the children i think yes so coming from a trauma informed practice the sound of that is what would be the trigger because i had had one gentleman say to me one time when we were at the nine i'm a community gardens and there was thunder and i said oh i said you hear that that's the under and he said yeah that's like the sound of planes going over our head that we would he on a daily basis so it's more it's that sound that triggers sure yeah but where i live i live quite a distance from my feel certain park which was the police to watch the snow birds but i had just finished saying to a neighbor oh i think if you really want to see them because they had come outside because they heard the sound i said if you really want to see it you have to go down to my field sutton park and just then one of the jets came right overhead swooped down very low and went straight up which of course was a huge roar and  was right over our street so you know i was thinking my goodness you know what if i were a small child you know it's one thing to be an adult you know you can sort of rationalize it you still have the feelings but for a child it's even harder and i don't know i think it is just i honestly think it's equally as hard for the parents because it brings them back to that point of being so worried of what would happen to those could happen to those their children in those situations and i don't think you can compare that to the impact that that sound has and where it where it brings that person back to issue of pretending that things are games when actually there's a fairly sinister background to all of them i think we need to get a little less shallow and think about why is this happening why is that even fireworks there explosions you know i've wondered for a long time how the wildlife react to that but again and if you've heard a lot of explosions gun fire in your own neighborhood some cultures love setting off firecrackers it's hard to photo to firecrackers that go up on the roofs and his set off firecrackers and so on and there's a sort of impact to that but yeah but there's a lot more the final question i was going to ask you said and i have another question tucked away just in case you quick on this one ok well what's most important message you want us to take from from this the centerpiece of this conversation well i think you've hit on it a fair bit in that it is the role as the community that we are inclusive and welcoming and creating that it environment for new comers that's what we can do that's what people say but what can i do and here we are right here in our community we have an organization that's more than a workshop came back from a international women's human rights institute examining cedaw which is the un convention against the elimination of discrimination of women and examining the numerous articles with still processing all that information i just came back on sunday and you know one of the most interesting things that still resonating in my mind is that it wasn't until one thousand nine hundred eighty three that women in women's rights were seen as human rights so it was through a beijing conference that pushed for the fact that women were women were equal to human rights one thousand nine hundred three that's not that long ago i remember that one no and in fact the psychiatrists have to have a lot of blame to take here because they used to have a list of attributes of a sane person they also had a list of attributes of a saying and attribute smart and they had figured out that there was some sort of very very strange thing going on yeah i mean it was also interesting within the u n structure is is how we were fortunate to be taught by the head of the u n working group for the  elimination of discrimination against women so she was the main faculty member and she was speaking about how hard it is to keep issues that women's rights even prevalent within the u n structure yeah because the so much for joining us