Getting Sea Legs
It feels like we've moved into a new season at Open Homes Hamilton recently.
We currently have 7 guests, more people than we've ever welcomed at once, but things are moving on pretty steadily. While there are always some curveballs, we know how to guide guests through their first months here. We know how to support a Welcome Circle and encourage companions and hosts as they welcome and support people. We have some strong policies, and we're starting to figure out how to invite full churches into welcoming refugee claimants.
Not everything is new all the time now--we're getting into a rhythm, and we're feeling grateful to be in a new stage of maturity as a ministry.
We also received the big news recently that we will be getting a substantial grant from NewGround, the arm of Diaconal Ministries Canada that provides start-up grants and support to new ministries that are connected to Christian Reformed churches!
This is huge for us. It certainly doesn't cover our whole operating budget, but it includes money for things like a volunteer appreciation event, learning opportunities for our volunteers, bus tickets and grocery cards for new guests, as well as some support for my salary.
If we're going to welcome guests well, we need to be helping volunteers to learn about refugee realities and unlearn the ways that charity and prosperity often train us to interact with people who are (for the time being) on the margins. So I'm very excited to be able to give that part of the work the attention it deserves!
The NewGround grant gets me started off on the right foot salary-wise, but I'm still just at the beginning of gathering a circle of supporters who can allow me to do this work long-term. Every person who gives to the work of Open Homes doesn't just represent a donor--to me, every person who signs on is giving another vote of confidence, both in this work and in me. Yes, churches can become places of hospitality for refugee claimants! And not just welcome, but real belonging! And yes, you can be part of making this happen, Danielle!
Sharon and Jim, helping our Nigerian guests to paint their new place, using paint donated by Meadowlands CRC!
My goal is to reach $1500 in monthly support by the end of December. I'm only at $250/month in salary right now, and that can't last long. So I'll be reaching out to each of you on this list in the coming weeks to tell you more about what's going on with Open Homes Hamilton, answer your questions, and ask if you would be willing to become a monthly supporter. If you can't right now, no worries! I’d love to chat with you over phone or over some good coffee regardless.
If you'd like to pre-empt my email and sign up right now, just message me! Relationships are so key to Open Homes thriving and surviving, not just by supporting networks of relationships across ethnic and class boundaries in Welcome Circles, but in relationships with our supporters too.
Examples of what your support can do:
$5: coffee with a new volunteer
$12.50: 5 bus tickets for a newly arrived guest
$20: snacks for a volunteer orientation
$40: round trip bus tickets + subway fare for a guest to visit their lawyer in Toronto
$50: a tank of gas for running errands with guests
$100: provide grocery cards until a guest is approved by Ontario Works and starts to receive assistance
$150: get a new guest started with a phone
It costs anywhere from $3000-5000 to welcome each new refugee claimant, including about 130 hours of Open Homes Hamilton time. (That's me! Or Katie, Alison, or Sharlene.)
Katie interviewing two recently arrived refugees from the Middle East about the support they received when they arrived, both the good and the not-so-good, at the Refugee Highway Partnership’s North America Roundtable this month.
That number is so variable for many reasons. Sometimes it takes longer for guests to be approved by Ontario Works and start receiving funds, especially if they are inland claimants, which means that they were already in Canada when they made their claim. Perhaps they were an overseas student at McMaster and discovered that they couldn't go home because violence had broken out.
The size of the family also makes a big difference, of course. We tend to welcome singles and couples, because most of our hosts just have one extra room to share with a refugee claimant, but when we are able to welcome a family, the costs for groceries and bus tickets increase quickly.
Right now we manage to cover a large portion of that cost by working without receiving much pay...but that's not sustainable!
In the midst of all this, the most precious parts of this work are the hours I get to spend with guests. This month, I got to drive a guest to Toronto to meet with her lawyer. Usually we would send people via the GO bus and the subway, but she had to be there early in the morning and I was nervous about her getting lost in Toronto. So we got to spend several hours together in the car, chatting about the differences between Canadian and Liberian politics, her family, what she can expect as she adapts to life in Canada, and some comfortable silences.
The other day, Dan and I picked rosehips with a former guest from Yemen and his daughter near our house. We'll bring the dried rosehips to his house soon and enjoy the fruity, flowery flavours together.
What a gift it all is.
A recommended resource:
Check out the Refugee Highway Partnership’s Beyond Soundbites podcast. It’s true to its name: you won’t get simplistic refugee stories here, told by people without lived refugee experience. Jacob Mau is very intentional about honouring the full humanity of the refugee-d people he interviews.
Find it at beyondsoundbitespodcast.org/
Prayer requests:
-That we would find good ways to challenge volunteers and invite them into an anti-racist community of learning.
-That the wife and family of our former guest from Yemen would be able to come here quickly. Family separation is so hard.
-For various apartment searches we’re working on at the moment, especially one for a guest with mobility limitations. Pray that we find good, accessible housing within her budget!