Refugee Resettlement

Our particular focus on refugee resettlement is based on a fundamental belief we have that for resettlement to be successful, it must have deep, community-based, bottom-up support.  That has the important, additional win-win benefit of involving the community and creating an opportunity for local families to experience the benefits of Welcoming the Stranger.

Our family’s personal experience with Community Sponsorship started in 2016 when we partnered with Jewish Family Service of Metrowest, HIAS and eight Boston area synagogues (including our own, Temple Beth Elohim) in a pilot project to resettle eight Syrian families. Three years later, these families are happy, healthy, employed, attending school and integrated. They continue to receive informal support/friendship from members of the community sponsor groups (including our own). This experience was life-changing for our entire family, and is in large part the basis of our ongoing global efforts to support community sponsored refugee resettlement.

In early 2017, recognizing that the United States was not likely to be hospitable to expanded resettlement programs, we turned our attention internationally. We were introduced to a coalition called The Global Refugee Sponsorship Initiative (GRSI), led by The Refugee Hub at University of Ottawa, The Open Society Foundations (OSF), UNHCR and the government of Canada.  GRSI’s mission is to: “share Canada’s experience and support the adoption of similar models in other countries. The ultimate goal is to increase refugee protection by mobilizing the compassion that exists in communities around the world.” Programs are underway in: The UK, Ireland, Germany, Spain, Argentina and New Zealand. 

In 2018, we learned that approximately 1,000 Canadian spaces under one of the three resettlement programs (called BVOR, which matches UNHCR most vulnerable refugees with private sponsors) were not going to be filled and would expire at the end of the calendar year. Recognizing that these scarce Canadian resettlement spaces had become the most coveted lottery tickets in the eyes of refugees in every corner of the planet, we vowed to do whatever we could to preserve them. 

Our thesis was that the financial burden on sponsor groups was severely limiting participation, and financial capacity should not be a barrier to sponsorship. Working closely with our partners at The Refugee Hub at UOttawa, the Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), UNHCR, The Giustra Foundation, and Jewish Family Service of Ottawa, we created and funded a program (BVOR Fund) which would provide qualified sponsors with the funding they needed to be matched with a refugee family for resettlement. The program was a tremendous success, and with several of our philanthropic partners joining us, the result was the resettlement of 668 refugees in 2018.  After being renewed in 2019, another 517 were matched. We are currently working with IRCC and other partners to leverage our experience and implement another version of the program for 2020 (and beyond).