A few parts of 2020 that didn’t suck
On my 30th birthday last year, I pulled away from a house in an east end suburb, the kind that’s so new the dirt is still not scabbed over with grass and there’s not a tree in sight.
In the car with me was a tiny Iraqi Kurdish grandma who probably wouldn’t reach 5’ on her tiptoes. She spoke not a word of English and I spoke not a word of Kurdish or Arabic, so we drove in silence to Micah House to meet the translator while I cranked the heat to try to keep her tiny desert-born frame warm in the depth of a Canadian winter.
Now whenever I think of Alal*, I can’t help but smile. She speaks a few more words in English and I have gathered a handful of Kurdish and Arabic phrases. She calls me her “binta” (something like “daughter,” I think?) and she is very dear to me. We’ve smiled wordlessly at each other over innumerable cups of tea, Kurdish yogurt soup, cheese, mint curry, chicken. (It turns out Kurdish people appreciate dairy products at least as much as Dutch people do!)
Although I haven’t been able to spend much time with her recently, Alal is a gift of 2020 to me.
(Another gift of 2020: this staff photo, which I find hilarious and my coworkers find…less so. Forgive me? I think it has “American Gothic” vibes.)
I don’t want to paper over the losses of 2020, but you’ve heard enough about how difficult this year has been. It has been hard that we haven’t been able to welcome a new refugee guest since March. We recently were close to welcoming a new couple from Colombia through a partnership with the Colombian Refugee Association here in Hamilton, but with the new lockdown announcement it didn’t seem wise. (We were able to offer them support for their accommodations in another way—grateful for that.) It has been hard to cancel all of our in-person gatherings, when eating together is the best shortcut across language barriers. It has been hard to shift our volunteer orientations to an online format and struggle with WiFi connections.
So much has been hard, and to be honest I am quite content to stay home and hibernate for a couple weeks for Christmas. To power my brain down a bit and rest from the complicated decisions of 2020 sounds pretty nice!
(This also didn’t suck. I liked this. A scene from one of our picnics in September, with a refugee friend from Mali.)
But at our leadership team meeting the other morning, we reflected a bit on the things that we *could* do in 2020. It turns out that 2020 did bring many gifts to Open Homes Hamilton, along with the stresses and losses and challenges.
Here are a few of the things that we’re glad to have been able to do in 2020. God has been faithful, despite it all.
7 guests found long-term apartments! - Despite discrimination, despite pandemic rules, despite online viewings, despite unending logistics to coordinate moving teams safely, despite mobility issues, despite OW and ODSP rates that are unbelievably low in today’s rental market, 7 more refugee claimants now have safe housing. YES!
Church partnerships - We started the year without a single finalized church partnership, and we find ourselves at the end of 2020 with 3! Meadowlands Fellowship CRC, St. Clair Church, and Eucharist Church. Pretty cool that they come from 3 entirely different denominations as well. These churches have committed to being connected to the work we do in various ways, from praying for guests to gathering furniture for guests’ first houses to contributing host homes to taking offerings.
Small education grants for guests - Getting some training or Canadian credentials can be an important part of settling into life in Canada. It was exciting to be able to give small education grants to 3 guests to help with their education--one for accountant’s training and two for Personal Support Worker courses.
Vision! - I find the words “we build communities of belonging with refugee claimants” rolling off my tongue a lot these days. They feel right. And having had these conversations sets us up well for strategic planning, grant writing, communications, etc.
Finding safe ways to stay in community - It was strange to be talking about creating communities of belonging with refugee claimants...and not being able to see anyone! But we were able to gather online twice during Ramadan (once to eat an iftar meal “together” and once to learn about what Ramadan means to Muslims), enjoy some smaller picnics together in September, and the other night more than 40 of us gathered online for a Christmas party. It was wacky and chaotic, but so fun!
Grants - We’re grateful to have received grants from 3 organizations this year: the Charis Foundation, Diaconal Ministries Canada (their New Ground grant), and the CBOQ (a Baptist denomination). We’re very thankful to our granters!
(Dear 2021, please bring back times of eating together with friends. Pretty please. Also, more injera please.)
New volunteers trained - 16 new people joined our network and were trained this year, from hosts to church point people, advocates to companions. We especially love it when people with lived refugee experience join our network, and that happened several times this year. (Recruiting more volunteers who have been through their own refugee journeys is definitely a priority for us, for so many reasons.)
Anti-racism trainings - I’ve written about this a lot, but this was huge. We took a bit of a leap of faith as a team to work with Leading in Colour, and we’re so glad we did.
A very successful Ride for Refuge - 6 teams raised more than $16,000 for our work, a portion of which went towards getting our rent advance program started. Newcomers often struggle to make the deposit for a new apartment, and an Ontario Works program to give them a bit extra to cover the deposit is often too slow to get the apartment. (And requires confirmation from the landlord...who usually won’t sign until the deposit is paid. It’s a real catch-22.) With this money, we’re able to provide small short-term bridge loans to help people pay the deposit. They pay us back one they receive the OW money, so we should be able to cycle through the same money over and over again.
Many guests took steps forward in getting settled in Canada - From apartments to jobs to graduating into a new English class to buying cars to successful hearings to getting their kids registered in school...refugee claimants kept putting one foot in front of the other. In a year that we’ve all had to find new reserves of resilience, refugee claimants have a lot to teach.
Now to hide under a rock for a bit. Or really, to sit beside the fire and crochet.
Peace out, 2020.
Zzzzz…..