The Manning + Ulster Refugee Project
477 Manning ave M6G 2V8 Toronto, ON, Canada

In March, we were contacted by AURA to ask whether, while we continue to wait to be matched with a large refugee family, we would be willing to sponsor a single person already on the list awaiting sponsorship. The MURP group agreed unanimously that we are able to help both the single person and a subsequent family, and so we enthusiastically accepted the matching offer. [ 158 more words. ] http://murp.ca//06/16/we-have-been-assigned-our-first-refu

35 minutes left for the silent auction!

Hurry up before all the amazing food goes. Still lots of time to bid...

So many great items to bid for! Blue Jays tickets, art and antique objects! Come, get some wine and bid to support our initiative! Prices are extremely low, wine is extremely good! https://theta360.com/s/q0LOqxv78Y4A4AmX3iZWe7B7Q

We are looking for a 2- or 3-bedroom apartment in the downtown core ASAP. Anyone got any leads??

We have been matched with a new family! We’re very happy to announce that after long last, we have been matched with a refugee family! We confirmed our commitment earlier this month with AURA to resettle a family of 4, mother, father and two young children, in Toronto. They are Syrian refugees, currently seeking refuge in Malaysia. They will arrive sometime between mid-November and early January. This is a Blended Visa Office/Referred (BVOR) case, which means the governme...nt provides some level of financial support for 6 months, which is great. Although we still have some funds remaining from our last campaign that began in 2015, we will need some additional money to help this new family through its first year in Toronto. If you are in a position to help us, please click the Donate button on the right side of this page. As more news becomes available, we will post it here on the murp.ca web site. In the meantime, our group will have lots of work to do in preparing for the family’s arrival!

Almost a year, and we're ready for another sponsorship! Wow, does time ever fly! We are into our 10th month of our sponsorship of A, the 20 year-old refugee from Iraq. Things are going very well for him. He’s been going to school since last September at the Central Toronto Academy, a regular TDSB high school in Little Italy. He’s doing very well, and his English has improved dramatically. A has a part-time job at a high-end dinner/jazz club in the city, which he enjoys v...ery much. He fills his spare time with homework, going to the West End YMCA, helping with the monthly dinners that St. Thomas’ Huron Street puts on for the under-housed and under-employed, and spending time with friends, as well as the occasional lunch or dinner with some of the sponsorship committee members. In short, it has been a wonderful experience for everyone involved. We have decided that we are going to extend our support for A beyond the required and usual one year that privately-sponsored refugees are given. Even though he is doing very well in school, he does need more time to bring his English up to the Grade 12 level required for graduation. This isn’t a process that can be rushed; he needs to work through the ESL levels one by one, and then he needs to complete the required high school English classes. It was important to us that A successfully complete his high school education it just didn’t seem right to cut him off before he reached this milestone. After he gets his diploma, he will have the same options any high-school grad in Ontario has he will be able to apply to college or university, if he wants to, taking advantage to funding programs offered by the province. Or if he wants to go directly into the workforce, he can do so with his diploma under his belt. In the meantime, the sponsorship committee has also been moving forward with preparations to welcome another refugee family. When we agreed to sponsor A last summer, we told AURA that we would want to apply for another family once we had A well settled into his life here in Toronto. We have submitted our application to take on another refugee case; this time, we are hoping that we will be matched with a larger family. We aren’t sure how long it will be before we are matched to a family the government’s resettlement targets have changed this year, and the number of families being brought in under the Blended Visa-Office Referral (BVOR) program is significantly smaller that it was last year. Nevertheless, we are hopeful that we’ll have some good news to share with you before the summer is finished. Thanks for your continued support!

The young man who came to us from Iraq (via Jordan) in June has had an eventful summer discovering a new city and a new country, learning a new language and a new alphabet, new currency, figuring out the TTC and mastering how to order at Tim Horton’s among many other things. He is charming and motivated and loves the neighbourhood. Introducing him to the pleasures of Toronto in summer has made us see the city with fresh eyes and appreciate how fortunate we are to live here.... Learning English is his first priority. He began lessons in basic English with TDSB two weeks after his arrival and then took a month-long intensive course at U of T. With diligence and a LOT of homework he has advanced quickly and is now a Grade 12 student at a high school at the Central Toronto Academy on Shaw St. This is a major accomplishment given that three months ago he had only a few words of English and that his formal education stopped over 2 years ago when he became a refugee. For most of the summer, A. lived in a lovely studio apartment in a coach house in the Annex. We are now looking for accommodations for the next year. Like many groups across the country, we are still waiting to be assigned a larger family of refugees. We look forward to welcoming them, and are so glad that with the generosity of our donors, we are also helping this young man build a new life in Canada. http://murp.ca/2016/09/19/the-first-two-months/

So our young refugee (I'll call him A.) arrived last night after a VERY long trip from Amman. He was in good spirits though, and after enduring a seemingly endless trip from the airport to his temporary home in The Annex, we managed to feed him and get him set up with a telephone and internet access. (Shout out to Alberta and Elizabeth C. [ 672 more words. ] http://murp.ca/2016/06/24/the-first-24-hours