Who we are
In the midst of the surge of Syrian refugees, Dr Mary Jo Leddy, the founder of Romero House, and a strong Canadian advocate for refugees, gave this advice: “Pay attention; don’t wait until you are ready; do what you can.” Listen to one of her powerful homilies here.
The Redeemer Refugee Committee strives to take Dr Leddy’s advice. We are an interfaith group working with the Anglican United Refugee Alliance (AURA) to settle refugees in Toronto since 2015. In the past six years, our group has settled two families and five individuals. If you are interested in being part of the settlement group and our next sponsorship, please contact Alison Colvin. The AURA settlement plan is a helpful document to read that explains the committee’s commitment as part of sponsorships.
See the Redeemer e-news for ongoing information regarding our current sponsorship.
How you can help
- Donate to our current sponsorship. You can do so through Canada Helps.
- Become a member of our group. We can always use extra hands to greet people at the airport, orient them to Toronto, help with medical appointments and educational needs, etc.
- Do you have access to temporary or permanent housing for refugees? If so, please be in touch.
- Please consider using this letter, as is or revised. It calls on the Canadian government to reactivate and increase the Blended Visa Office-Referred (BVOR) programme. Understandably, refugees arriving with the support of sponsorship groups such as ours at Redeemer are more readily settled than those simply coming as government-sponsored refugees. The letter also calls for increasing admissions to Canada, to benefit both those displaced from their homelands and Canadian society at large. A large number of letters from constituents will indicate to our representatives that this is an important issue worthy of their attention.
