Forum at Central Library sought to identify plan for Syrian refugees in Calgary
Posted Nov 19, 2015 5:07 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A forum at the Central Library Thursday morning brought together community based organisations and members of the public, to develop a city-wide structure and a plan to prepare for the impending arrival of 1,100 Syrian refugees to our city.
More than 300 people packed the library’s John Dutton Theatre to hear about plans for mobilizing essential services including housing, health care, education, and language instruction.
Anoush Newman with the Calgary Catholic Immigration Society said a lot of work needs to be done.
“Health, education, initial settlement, housing, employment, sponsorship. So each task force will be looking at how they can mobilize their services and ramp up to deliver more services,” Newman said.
Mayor Naheed Nenshi opened the forum, and is heartened by the turnout of people wanting to help-out.
“We have a lot of hard work to ahead of us. And I dont care about the politics or whether we’re doing the right thing,” Nenshi said. “The fact remains that we’re going to have more than 1,000 people, probably more than 350 or 400 new families come to Calgary very very quickly. Our job as a community is to make sure that they’ve the best possible chance once they get here.
Nenshi expects an announcemnet of the federal government’s plans for intake over the next couple of days, and says we could see the first arrivals in our city within a few weeks.
