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| Yazidi children in a refugee camp prior to coming to Canada. |
The urgent appeal for help came in late August.
It came from Belle Jarniewski on behalf of Operation Ezra,
a grassroots group of over 20 Jewish and Christian partners which had sponsored
55 Yazidi refugees to come to Winnipeg in 2017.
In her note, Jarniewski indicated most of the
refuges they had sponsored were doing OK’ the children were enrolled in school
and the adults were studying English.
In fact, many of the adults were already working.
But the same could not be said for another group of approximately 180 government-sponsored Yazidi refugees who also came to Winnipeg.
“They are struggling to adjust without the kind of
supports that private sponsors—often faith groups—supply,” Jarniewski said.
One of the greatest needs was for food.
“The money they receive from the government leaves
very little for groceries once rent and other essential expenses have been paid,”
she explained.
Although Operation Ezra was not
responsible for these refugees, “we feel an obligation to help, as do our Operation Ezra Yazidi
families, who want to ‘pay it forward’ by helping families who are not as
fortunate.”
Many of the government-sponsored refugee families
were single mothers with children, she said, their husbands having been
executed by ISIS.
“They are still dealing with the trauma of their
experience at the hands of ISIS, where many of the moms were sex slaves for
extended periods of time and many of the children were also captives and
severely abused,” she shared.
Operation Ezra was helping as it could, providing
bi-weekly food assistance. But its resources were stretched.
As the faith page columnist at the Free Press, Jarniewski asked: Could I do
something to help?
I said yes—how could I not?
I sent an e-mail to a couple of dozen churches I
had developed relationships with as a columnist, inviting them to help.
A few got back to me quickly, saying they’d like to
do something but they had refugee families of their own, and were stretched to
the limit.
But ten congregations came through. Of the
donations, Jarniewski said: “We are so grateful!”
Of course, the help—as important as it was—won’t meet all
the needs for the refugees.
They will continue to require various kinds of assistance
now and into the future. But the response was still a great illustration of how
people of faith rally to help when called upon.
The situation facing the government-sponsored refugees also
showed the important role faith groups play in refugee sponsorship.
As a 2016 report by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship
Canada demonstrated, refugees sponsored by faith or community groups do better
than government-assisted ones, with fewer refugees ending up relying on food
banks and social assistance.
The experience is also shows there is a lot of good news
about faith today.
So much of the news about religion in 2018 was about
scandal and sexual abuse. These are things that need to be reported, as hard as
it is to read.
Faced with this constant drip of negative stories, it can
be tempting to think nothing good can come out of organized religion.
But as the response to the Yazidi refugees shows, there
are also lots of positive stories about the ways local faith groups have made a
difference in Winnipeg and beyond—something readers of this faith page are made
aware of on a weekly basis.
Credit for this goes to the Free Press. You may not realize it, but the Free Press is of the only newspapers in Canada that still has a weekly
faith page carrying local religion news.
While shrinking revenues have caused other newspapers to eliminate
their religion coverage, or reduce it to a few wire service stories, the Free Press has maintained its commitment
to telling the stories of Winnipeg’s faith groups.
So here’s to all the faith groups and individuals who
keep on shining the light to make Winnipeg and the world a better place, and to
the Free Press, which continues to
provide a way to share those stories.
From the Jan. 5 Winnipeg Free Press.
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