CURRENT PROJECTSIAFR Canada works with churches and organizations around the world, walking alongside displaced people, helping them survive and recover. |
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- Open Homes Hamilton is a ministry of IAFR which works to establish a multi-church network supporting refugee claimants in Hamilton Ontario, Canada. The strategy of Open Homes is home-based hospitality.
Each church contributes “Hosts” who offer space in their home for a newly arrived refugee claimant to live for 2 to 4 months. Churches also provide “Companions” who volunteer to provide settlement support and friendship. The Open Homes leadership team ensures that refugee claimants have access to the information and community resources they need to navigate the refugee claim process.
Hospitality is core to the Christian faith. When the Bible speaks of hospitality, it is specifically talking about showing love to foreigners and strangers. Open Homes is a great way for Christians to live out the spiritual practice of hospitality.
Learn more about Open Homes Hamilton.
WINNIPEG, MB
Refugee Support
In Winnipeg, Manitoba, IAFR partners with local churches and organizations to provide pastoral support and trauma care for refugees and refugee claimants. Working very closely with our partner Naomi House, a home for refugee claimants to Winnipeg, IAFR has established a number of trauma care healing groups in the city, and also has worked one-on-one with individuals in need of trauma counselling.
IAFR also works with churches in Winnipeg to help them better understand how they can more effectively come alongside refugees in their city.
TORONTO, ON
The Peoples House
The Peoples House is a ministry of The Peoples Church in Toronto, Canada, and is supported by the IAFR team. The Peoples House was created in response to the increased demand for safe housing for refugee claimants in Toronto. The Peoples Church has responded to this need by providing a safe home for approximately 8 to 14 refugee claimants at a time who would otherwise have no safe place in Toronto. Residents stay at the house for approximately 4 months while they go through the initial stages of the refugee claim process and get established in their new city and country.
The house provides a safe environment, as well as physical, spiritual and emotional support for everyone who lives there. The ministry also provides an opportunity for people to build friendships with their fellow residents as well as church volunteers, while offering practical help with the many challenges that face new arrivals to Canada.
Learn more about The Peoples House.
IAFR Canada works closely with our partner, I Live Again Uganda (ILA), to bring support to refugees in Uganda, through the provision of Trauma Counseling, Faith Based Support, Resettlement, and Community Development to individuals, families and communities affected by the 23 year civil war that impacted the northern region of the country. Presently, Uganda has welcomed the most refugees on the continent of Africa. The majority of refugees in Uganda are from South Sudan. The main focus of ILA's services to refugees from South Sudan is mental health/psychosocial support. Programs are provided in villages that were directly affected by the civil war, as well as in Acholi Quarter, which is an urban displacement community found in Kampala.
In addition, Potter's House is a partnership initiative between IAFR Canada and ILA. Site plans have been prepared and ILA and IAFR are looking forward to advancing the development of the 23 acres of land in Uganda's northern region. The Potter's House will be a place of encounter for individuals and families that are in need of counseling. The time that individuals will have at The Potter’s House will bring hope, healing and identity through various trauma counseling and therapeutic services, including music, art, pottery and play.
Lastly, in 2020 ILA and IAFR identified the fact that, due to crowded conditions, difficulties accessing soap and water, and many underlying preexisting health conditions, refugees living in refugee camps were particularly vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic. We worked together to supply soap to residents of the Palabek Camp in Lamwo Uganda. The soap distribution was coordinated along with the UNHCR, and focused on supporting the most vulnerable refugees, including pregnant women and mothers with babies, as well as malnourished children.
Due to restrictions and isolation, lack of food also became an enormous need. IAFR and ILA worked together to provide food, as well as soap, for those for those who are victims of war living in Acholi Quarter.
MEDICAL SUPPLIES
Dzaleka Refugee Camp
Food Crisis
Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Malawi is home to more than 55,000 people. Refugees in Dzaleka are currently facing a food crisis. IAFR Canada is working with partners to try to respond to this serious humanitarian need.
In 2022 the World Food Program (WFP) cut the household provision for 300 Dzaleka households, including many widows and single mothers. With shrinking revenue and increasing costs, the WFP plans to remove all Dzaleka refugees from the distribution over the next couple years. The need for sustainable and durable solutions is pressing.
IAFR’s project is designed to respond collaboratively to this emerging food shortage. IAFR, along with our partners, is looking at a four-part response to this crisis:
- Emergency funds for people cut from the WFP
- Small plot gardening
- Larger scale gardening
- Advocacy/sustainable solutions
Our partners There is Hope Malawi and Inua Advoacy have already done some important work regarding initial emergency response. For stage 2 we are pursuing a partnership with Thrive for Good whose expertise is in farming small patches of land.
Eventually we would like to work with residents and partners to grow farming beyond small individual pieces of land into larger spaces that can support more people and can provide food that will go to market. Once the government changes its restrictions, there is abundant uncultivated land within an hour of Dzaleka.
Medical Supplies
IAFR Canada is working with our partners Health Partners International Canada (HPIC), There is Hope, and IAFR USA, to bring much needed health supples into Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Malawi.
Dzaleka health centre, located in Dzaleka Refugee Camp is a government owned facility supported by UNHCR which serves the population in the camp and host community. The clinic provides primary health care services to a catchment population estimated to be over 80,000 persons.
Essential drugs are provided by central medical stores, UNHCR procurement and support from other partners, but supplies are inadequate to meet the demand.
HPIC works to supply medicine where most needed around the world. IAFR Canada, along with IAFR USA and There is Hope (Malawi), is working with HPIC to provide medicine to Dzaleka. This includes 20 Humanitarian Medical Kits (HMKs) available that will add up to 12,000 treatments of molecules as itemized in the normal essential medicines in demand for this health clinic. Each kit has up to 600 treatments for primary health care.LEBANON
School, Healthcare, Sewing and Meals
IAFR Canada is working alongside our partner in Beirut, Lebanon – the Beirut Nazarene Church (BNC) to support refugees living in Beirut. These refugees have primarily fled from Syria, but also Iraq and other countries. BNC is located in Karm El Zeitoun, Beirut, a highly populated area, home to Lebanese and many other nationalities.
IAFR supports BNC in providing schooling for refugee children. Currently at BNC, 100 elementary-school-aged children who are not able to enroll in formal schools, gain the knowledge and qualifications necessary to eventually join official Lebanese schools.
IAFR has also come alongside BNC’s medical clinic, which operates bi-weekly out of the church, serving 50 to 70 patients each session.
Thirdly, in response to the great economic need facing families, an exciting initiative has begun in partnership with the Beirut team. Loving Hands, launched in April 2021, is a social enterprise that offers much needed holistic support for families in Beirut. The women are given the opportunity to use their sewing skills to earn an income for their family and at the same time they are being mentored and discipled. They are creating a community who provide emotional and spiritual support for one another in a natural, organic way as they work side-by-side. This is a sister to the thriving Hopeful Hands project in Iraq.INTERNATIONAL
Personnel Support
IAFR Canada regularly supports our global partners on the ground in places like Iraq, Egypt and Greece by sending IAFR team members to help with existing or emerging projects.
Twice a year in Iraq, workers and teams from IAFR Canada visit to offer support to vulnerable women who have experienced forced displacement. Hopeful Hands, a sewing program which started in October 2017, is a social enterprise that offers much needed holistic support for women who have experienced displacement. These women create high quality products, while also experiencing community and providing emotional and spiritual support for one another as they work side-by-side.
In Iraq our team has also come alongside churches in providing teaching and encouragement to refugee women.
In Cairo Egypt, IAFR personnel supported a local school for refugee children, and on the island of Lesvos in Greece we have helped to teach English to children in a refugee camp.
Prayer Pilgrimages
Prayer truly is at the heart of everything IAFR Canada does.
With a world that's in turmoil and over 100 million people on the Refugee Highway, how else could we imagine making even a small impact?
We hope you'll join us as we continue to grow in praying for and with refugees.Canadian Border Prayer Pilgrimages
Led by the IAFR Canada team, this day of pilgrimage for ministry leaders in this liminal space is a rhythm of- learning,
- praying and
- reflection.
When: Late spring, early fall
Schedule: 10 am - 4:30 pm
Location: Fort Erie, Ontario.
As part of our pilgrimage, we visit two other nonprofits that support refugee claimants as they arrive at the Fort Erie border.
Plans are in the works to pray at other border crossings across Canada, too.
Interested? Let us know.International Prayer Pilgrimages
In 2019 an IAFR team, along with our partner 24-7 Prayer Canada, visited Chiapas Mexico for a prayer pilgrimage. Many thousands of displaced people continue to cross the southern border of Mexico as they flee numerous conflicts and struggles in Latin and South America, as well as Haiti and numerous African countries. Representatives from IAFR and 24-7 visited various cities in Chiapas, as well as across the Guatemalan border, where, along with local churches, we prayed with people walking this portion of the refugee highway.
This was a pilot project in which we sought to understand how best to pray for, and with, displaced people on their actual journey in search of safety. Our plan is that this will be the first of many opportunities for us to join people along the refugee highway, praying with local churches and seeing how God is at work.
Praying at the Peace Bridge, Fort Erie
Praying in Chiapas, Mexico
