Refugee Settlement in Wellington

As you may know, NZ has a quota of Refugees that are accepted into the country every year. These people are mostly welcomed in conjunction with the Red Cross, and some of you may have been involved with former refugees in this way. 

In about 2017 NZ trialled a pilot of a program that has been run in Canada for more than 30 years, called Global Refugee Sponsorship Initiative. The original trial in NZ ran successfully for 3 years, welcoming 50 people in several locations. It has been decided to extend the trial for another 3 years, and this is where we come in. Any group of people can get together and commit to sponsor a refugee family, who come independent of the NZ quota and Red Cross. Your group is responsible for every aspect of their resettlement process, from finding a house and furnishing it, to enrolments in school, doctors, language learning or job seeking. It's not a difficult task, so don't be overwhelmed and think it's too hard, but it does take someone with commitment and who genuinely cares for people. This is such a great opportunity and we’d love to know if we have some people from East who would like to know more. We could gather a group from across East, or you might decide this is something your life group would be interested in doing together.

We need to decide if this is something we want to commit to being involved in as a location, so we’re going to hold a short meeting on 6 July that is purely an opportunity to find out more - no commitment at this stage! We will only run that meeting if there are people interested so please email east@thestreet.org.nz to let us know.