Project Hope

OIL’s Project Hope started in September 2015. As civil war displaced millions within Syria, and the Trudeau government committed to resettling 25,000 refugees in Canada, OIL reached out to our tight-knit community for financial donations. Our initial goal was to support at least one Syrian family over a one-year period. We also asked members to personally sign up to volunteer their time. At first, we hoped to raise $30,000 to support a family of four. When all the donations were counted, we discovered we could sponsor more people: for we had raised $150,000!

Our next step was to team up with the Office for Refugees, Archdiocese of Toronto (ORAT), who gave us the opportunity to sponsor four Syrian families in need of help. ORAT is a federally recognized Sponsorship Agreement Holder with a history of supporting refugee sponsorship since the 1960s. With their guidance and support, OIL completed the applications process to support several families.

Manal El-Ammary and Children

Manal and her seven children arrived in May 2018. Given the size of the family and the special needs of their youngest child, it was difficult to find temporary shelter when they first arrived.  With the incredible generosity of Cheryl Arrowsmith and her husband Peter, the family had a home to stay in for their first four weeks.

During that time, teams of Project Hope volunteers from the OIL community supported Manal and the children to access schools, banks, medical services and housing. They eventually settled into an apartment in the Thorncliffe area of Toronto.  All the children were able to access school, including the youngest. Manal also started English classes in order to become more independent.

It has not been an easy road for them. But they have met the challenges in their own ways.  Though formal education has not been the road for the eldest of Manal’s children, they have found a good fit within the local construction sector and are currently working full time. The family has recently moved into a slightly larger apartment within the same community, providing consistency with schools and services. They now also have a vehicle of their own, which has helped tremendously with medical and special-needs appointments.

The OIL Community’s Role

The primary role of the OIL Community was to raise funds for sponsorship. Of course, we had to complement that with practical support for each family. As such, our volunteers were very hands on in the settlement process. Volunteers were organized into five teams:

• Housing
• Finance
• Education
• Health
• Employment

Each team took responsibility to support the goals of each individual family. To support the coordination of these five teams, some with more than 10 volunteers, we also had a “core team” that kept us organized and focused on meeting the objectives for the project.

Throughout this effort, we had the opportunity to reflect on the situation that brought us here, our role and the roles of our families, as well as the connection to our faith and Islamic edicts.

Contact Us:

oilsyrianrelief@gmail.com

For more information on the crisis affecting families in Syria, you can visit the website below: 

UNHCR: Syria