MONCTON – Helping the flood of refugees settle in New Brunswick will require a lot of support from the community, says a representative from the Multicultural Association of Greater Moncton and Area.
Justin Ryan says they simply don’t have enough staff to settle the hundreds of refugees expected to arrive in the coming weeks.
“Nobody who is involved in resettling refugees is underestimating the enormous challenge that comes with taking a four-year target and putting it into a few weeks,” he said.
New Brunswick is expected to take in four times more refugees than it typically does in a year. In less than six weeks, close to 300 will arrive in Moncton alone.
Ryan says the federal government is offering MAGMA more funding for staff and resources.
“But funding does not immediately turn into experienced educated staff who know how to resettle refugees,” he said.
“The whole interview process and everything is going to take a while for those staff to come through which is why recruiting volunteers has been such a big part in our preparations for this because we are going to need a lot of community volunteer support in order to make the resettlement an effective reality.”
Wadhaa Raouf and his wife Ragad Al-Mashta immigrated to Canada from Iraq about four years ago. They’ve offered to help hundreds of Syrian refugees settle into Moncton in the coming weeks.
“The main reason is we feel them because the situation is not so easy just to adjust their life,” said Raouf.
“They don’t know the first thing, the language, and they don’t know anything about the community. The contact with the community, the food, what they dress,” said Al-Mashta.
Fluent in Arabic, they hope to make Syrian refugees feels at home as best as they can.
“They need some time to shop, they need to see the city, to contact with a family doctor with the hospital,” said Al-Mashta.
“It’s a big, big job to do to help them.”
On Thursday evening, a tri-community information session is being held in Moncton calling for more volunteers.
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