“There’s this huge misconception that refugees choose to be refugees.”
Imagine being forced to leave your home.
Set adrift, hoping to find a place to land, somewhere safe so you can rebuild your life.
“There’s this huge misconception that refugees choose to be refugees,” says ChrisAnn Alvarez, Refugee Support at The United Church of Canada. “It’s not a choice. It’s something they’re forced into.”
It’s a reality that is faced by millions of refugees, and it’s a reality that is becoming more and more prominent. More people are displaced today than ever before: 117.2 million, says the UN Refugee Agency.*
That’s the equivalent of three Canadas.
There are many causes: human conflict, climate change, human rights violations, and more.
We can help.
Your gifts provide food, water, sanitation, and social support to people forced to flee their homes. Mission and Service creates educational and confidence-building programs in refugee camps.
Mission and Service also helps refugees find new homes. “Congregations form sponsorship groups together to sponsor the refugee,” Alvarez explains. “What Mission and Service allows is for them to sponsor through their own congregation.”
She tells one story of a sponsor who renovated their basement after it flooded and immediately planned to sponsor a refugee in the new space.
“Who thinks like that?!” Alvarez exclaims with wonder and awe. “It’s just so beautiful!”
The refugee stayed with his sponsors for years, and they became an adopted family to one another. “The sponsor told me, ‘We have no kids, so this was an unexpected blessing,’” Alvarez recalls, tearing up. “That’s one example of someone opening their home in their home, in their heart, and allowing themselves to be transformed.”
When we help protect one refugee from persecution, death, or years in a refugee camp, we save the world for that one person—and just maybe for ourselves, too.
More detailed videos, A Deeper Look: Making a Home for Refugees - Part 1 and Part 2, are available on YouTube.