It's been a long wait for Habtom, a refugee from Eritrea. We submitted a sponsorship application for him more than four years ago, but due to the backlog caused by the COVID-19 epidemic and other factors, it took much longer than anticipated for him to finally arrive in Toronto 10 days ago. He is settling in well and will initially focus on learning English. We hope that his three teenage children, who recently fled Eritrea's repressive regime and are now living in precarious circumstances in Ethiopia, will be able to join him in Canada later this year. Habtom has been separated from his child ..read more

We need your support - again! This year, our group is sponsoring an Eritrean father who was forced to flee his country over a decade ago and has been living in limbo in a neighboring country ever since. More recently, his three teenage children fled Eritrea to avoid upcoming forced military service, which is often indefinite and is subjecting conscripts to inhuman and degrading treatment. They are now living in precarious circumstances in Ethiopia, awaiting their travel arrangements to Canada and the opportunity to reunite with their father after 13 years.  For the last 30 years, Eritr ..read more

The Ripple Refugee Project is very pleased to announce the arrival of our latest privately-sponsored refugee family. The father, Khaled, is a Syrian citizen who fled the civil war in 2012 and has been residing in precarious circumstances in Ethiopia since then. Our application to sponsor him, his wife Abeba, and their daughter was submitted on March 31, 2016 and we are thrilled that they finally arrived in mid-October and are quickly and easily settling into their new home. We also wanted to let you know that after 12 months, our financial support for the Eritrean mother and her 5 childr ..read more

The importance of learning English for the successful settlement of newcomers can not be overstated. When the first former refugees we sponsored - a Syrian family of eight - arrived in Canada at the end of 2015, enrolling them in ESL classes was one of our top priorities. Most of them are fluent now. For Jamila, a single Eritrean mum with four small children who arrived in November 2018, participating in English classes proved to be a lot more challenging. We have not been able to find subsidized childcare for her two youngest, making it impossible for her to attend formal classes. But we have ..read more

Through the contact form on our blog, we recently received an email with the following question: “How do you organize yourselves so that the complex work of settlement and support can happen for multiple families without burning out your team of volunteers?” It's an important question, and not an easy one to answer. Each of the three families that we have sponsored so far arrived after the first year of settlement of the previous family was over, so that made things easier. But having enough volunteers to carry out all the tasks needed is no easy feat, especially for the latest arrival, a si ..read more

A living room meeting leads to a BVOR sponsorship group  Yosief Araya, Director of the Refugee Sponsorship Training Program (RSTP), remembers the first time he heard from what later became the Ripple Refugee Program, a Toronto group that has since sponsored 17 individuals, including two BVOR families.  “I got a call from Andrew Fitzgerald inviting me to speak about refugee sponsorship to some of his friends and neighbours,” Yosief says. He has spoken about refugee sponsorship to groups across Canada, but “it was the first time I’ve ever been invited to speak in someone’s living room.” That ..read more