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SocietyNovember 27, 2018

The community have proved they can change refugees’ lives. Let’s not quit now

Guest writer
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Amnesty International today hands over 10,276 signatures to Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway in the form of the I Welcome Pledge, which urges the government to make community sponsorship for refugees permanent. This scheme, explains Meg de Ronde of Amnesty International NZ, complements the refugee quota programme, with the difference being that community groups take the lead, providing the support that refugees need to rebuild their lives here.

You’ve probably heard the stats about tens of millions of refugees and felt disempowered, hopeless. It’s tragic, but what can we as individual people actually do about it? I found a compelling answer last year when I went to Canada to see community sponsorship of refugees in action.

Instead of the government taking all the responsibility for refugee families, community groups step up. They provide the logistics – helping newcomers to settle into new homes, get their kids enrolled in schools, figure out the public transport system, enrol in English language classes, go to the doctor and more. But most importantly, they become friends.

In the process, these community groups (or businesses, church groups, unions, clubs, etc) deepen their own friendships. It’s a model that gives me hope for the future. More refugees come to safety and our own communities become more connected and welcoming.

This year New Zealand has been running a small pilot programme. Testing the waters. Which is fantastic. But the government hasn’t yet committed to continuing it.

Amnesty International has met with many of the community groups and newcomers involved. That’s why today we’re handing over a report to Minister Iain Lees-Galloway, urging the government to make community sponsorship an ongoing programme. It works, and there are so many more New Zealanders who would jump at the chance to do something tangible like this. It’s a way to be part of the solution and spread a little hope around the world.

Here are some of the the newcomers, and people sponsoring them, that we met along the way.

Zuheir Al Qattan

Zuheir is 12 months old and obviously incredibly cute. Along with his mum Hayat and his dad Mohammed, he is getting used to a new life in Timaru with help from their local community sponsorship group. It’s a long way from war-torn Syria, from where they fled.

Zuheir and parents

Because of this programme, Zuheir can grow up in safety, go to kindergarten, make friends and play at the park – without the fear of bombs. It’s what Hayat and Mohammed hoped for when they moved halfway around the world to the uncertainty of a new place, a new culture and a new language. They’re now taking English language classes and working towards opening a kebab restaurant.

Mark Pavelka

Mark is the pastor at Gleniti Baptist Church in Timaru, and part of the community group that is sponsoring Zuheir, Hayat and Mohammed. After spending time with refugees in Indonesia, he wanted to do something. To reach out and help people who have been stuck, often for years, in precarious and uncertain situations with no end in sight.

Mark said, “It’s a win-win. The refugee families are gaining a lot, we’re gaining a lot.

Mark Pavelka

“One of the big costs of leaving your home country is being torn away from your support group. This gives them a new support group of people who really care – and offer all sorts of different talents and skills to help them settle in as fast as possible.

“To actually meet the family was quite overwhelming. It made it very personal. Helping them put the building blocks in place to reach their dream is rewarding. I really support this programme, because I think it is a responsible way to bring in refugees.”

Margaret O’Conner

Margaret is part of the community group in Nelson that’s sponsoring refugees. And she’s come up with possibly the best description of the experience: “It felt like giving birth to hope.”

Margaret is a member of the St Vincent De Paul Society, which joined forces with three friends in Nelson to form the community sponsor group. She went on to say, “I was particularly moved for some reason, the day that I took them into Nelson on the bus. I thought, I’m so proud to be part of it.

Margaret O’Conner

“What we’re getting from this experience, it’s just a blessing really. They’re so warm and loving and grateful. That’s not why you do it. But it really feels very affirming.

“I’d like to think that I could make some of that a little contagious for some of the people that I know around the country. I could certainly recommend it as something that people might want to choose to do.”

Saralinda MacMillan

Saralinda is one of the three friends in Nelson who wanted to sponsor a refugee, then reached out to the St Vincent De Paul Society for some extra support to form their community sponsor group.

She really summed up the way this programme makes New Zealand communities stronger, closer and more welcoming when she said, “It’s been a fascinating journey so far. I get a little bit emotional about the team. You know, this little group of people who are just so willing.

Saralinda MacMillan

“The main beneficiary has been the former refugee families. But you benefit quite often as well. And feel much more connected. That’s been just wonderful.”

Miriam Marshall

While traveling overseas, Miriam gained some perspective on how fortunate we are to live here in New Zealand. She saw the scope of the refugee crisis and was looking for a way to honour the people that she had met. She said, “This seemed like a really cool way to do something practical and tangible.”

Miriam Marshall

Miriam’s role is to coordinate the different volunteers supporting one of the refugee families in Christchurch.

“We’ve been really lucky in that the family we’re working with has a wee baby the same age as mine. So it’s been really nice, we can come and hang out and go to Plunket together and go to Playgroup. It’s really special being able to have cups of tea and just … yarn.

“This seems like such a natural model. In terms of having communities of people who are looking out, who run into each other, who support each other.

“I feel like we haven’t just made friends with our refugee family, we’ve also deepened our friendships with other people.”

It really is inspiring to hear some of the stories of lives changed for the better. And to know that more than 10,000 New Zealanders have signed the I Welcome Pledge, urging the government to make community sponsorship of refugees a permanent programme that will run in addition to our quota system.

When I was in Canada, this approach to refugee sponsorship – to hope – felt like it had become a part of the Canadian DNA. But it can be our story too. Kiwis want to help. Now it’s up to government to decide whether or not to give them the chance.

More Reading

    For more information about the programme see IWelcome.org.nz.

     

     

    Keep going!
    feet

    SocietyNovember 26, 2018

    Where and when are bare feet all good? A historic Spinoff debate

    feet

    In a bank? In a shop? On a plane? On a train? Where exactly is it appropriate to wear bare feet? The Spinoff’s own Don Rowe and Madeleine Chapman duke it out.

    Today shocking news broke of a woman denied access to Sylvia Park on account of her bare feet. The story sparked furious and passionate debate at Spinoff HQ, where even the very idea of what it means to be a New Zealander was up for discussion. Here is part of that conversation.

    This story was originally published in November 2018

    UPDATE 4.25pm Is this in fact Grammy-winning artist Donald Glover AKA Childish Gambino in bare feet on an Auckland street? 

    Don Rowe: The decision by security to remove barefoot Auckland woman Rachelle McDonald from Sylvia Park this weekend is disgusting and abhorrent. It is a fundamental and inalienable human right to feel the ground one walks on.

    Madeleine Chapman: I’m not here to argue that this woman deserved to be removed by security because that feels excessive. But I am here to argue that walking around in a shopping mall in the city without shoes or socks on is just gross.

    DR: Eating boiled eggs is gross. Oysters are gross, scones are gross, scallops and pork are gross. But I’ll die to defend your right to shucking a freshie, even in public. As a wee boy I walked 3km to school and back rain, hail or snow, and it toughened me physically and mentally, my psyche hardening like the skin of my feet. We must cherish our opportunities to build national character.

    MC: I’m not against bare feet in public. I have spent so much time without shoes on because it’s more comfortable and often more practical. Not in the city, though. I’m against bare feet in places where no feet should go bare. Like a shopping mall carpark and the gross floor of a supermarket. There is no purpose to bare feet on vinyl besides making your feet grotty. Bare feet at the park, yes. Bare feet at the beach, absolutely. Bare feet on a sunny day walking down to the dairy, sure. Bare feet while pushing a trolley around a brightly lit mall far from any beach, park, or pool? Piss right off.

    DR: Purpose?! The purpose is to assert yourself as tangata whenua, to say proudly to the world, “I am a Kiwi and these are my feet.” The purpose is to remind the state that while they might own the roads and the skies and have a fearsome monopoly on force, they don’t own me, or my feet. Consider this: never has a foot become smelly without a shoe to constrain it. In a world of rising fascism, do we want to cede a single liberty? To restrict spaces to only those in footwear? Bare feet are one of the few things that unify us across class lines in an increasingly stratified New Zealand.

    MC: Look, my reaction to people walking around on gross mall flooring in bare feet is the same as my reaction to people putting their shoes up on couches and tables. If you’re consistent, and bare feet is your natural position and you act accordingly, you do you. Shoes can be dirtied by the city and the roads and the skies and force, and then shoes can be removed. When your shoes are the bottoms of your feet, what do you do when you get home and have to take your shoes off so as not to dirty the carpet?

    DR: Dirty the carpet? The carpet is basically one huge scum filter anyway.

    MC: Yeah only because people and their gross shoes have walked all over it!

    DR: Listen, I shower once a day, most days, sometimes twice. Every shower I wash my feet. How many times in the past EVER have you washed the sole of your shoe? I think this is less about hygiene and more about control.

    MC: Maybe. I love to walk around in bare feet all the time. Shoes are restricting. But I’d rather do it in nature, where the natural body can meet the natural world. Not in the mall.

    DR: This isn’t a debate around preference. We’re talking human rights violations.

    MC: I can stand with Rachelle and her right to walk around the mall in whatever she wants. I just want some consistency in this country. If we’re going to be a barefoot nation then be a barefoot nation. Not a barefoot nation that actually loves shoes so much they’ll stand on other people’s furniture in them.

    DR: When Kupe leapt from his waka in the distant mists of history he did not do so in Chuck Taylors. Kupe’s feet were free as the mighty manu that glide still above Aotearoa. Kiwi kids are not just weet bix kids, but barefoot kids too. Wearing bare feet is a celebration of our needle-free streets, an outright acknowledgement of the pristine nation in which we live. Take the national flag, drop the Union Jack and replace it with ten free-range patriot toes. I will take my feet on a plane and on a train. I will march shoe-free up the stairs of parliament singing Wandering Eye and I will cripwalk my way barefoot down Queen Street.   

    MC: I have nothing against kids in bare feet. I agree we are lucky to live in a country where it’s possible to be so free of shoe jails. I’ll sign your petition. And I’ll stand by this country in all its barefoot glory. But if the gathering is in a mall, I’ll be standing in my jandals.

    DR: I stand barefoot with Rachelle McDonald, of Panmure, against fascism in all its forms.

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