Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.

Nelson Mandela

Schools are integral in helping newcomer children navigate their new communities. Over the next couple of years, in response to the Syrian refugee crisis, Canadian schools will receive students—who have lived through difficult conditions—and support their transition to Canadian society. Schools will also have an important role to play in educating Canadian students and families about Canada’s responsibilities to asylum seekers, and creating a positive, inclusive climate that will facilitate the successful integration of newcomers.

Schools Welcome Refugees is a grassroots initiative that asks school communities to do something more—specifically, to engage with Canada’s private sponsorship program and raise funds to sponsor refugee families coming to Canada.

Making sponsorship an option for school communities

The initiative was born last month when two schools in the west end of Toronto, Dewson Street Junior Public School and the Grove Community School, set out separately to sponsor a refugee family. Each raised over $35,000 from their communities in just a few short weeks, and took the first steps towards sponsorship. Now both of these schools have been matched with families seeking asylum, and are expecting those families to arrive within a few months.

There are 15,500 public elementary and secondary schools in Canada. Many schools are already set up to do considerable fundraising, making it possible to spread the financial commitment of refugee sponsorship across a larger number of supportive individuals. School communities are natural fits for refugee settlement activities—particularly where there are already strong resources like government-funded Settlement Workers in schools to provide support.

Challenging 1000 schools

We believe that 1000 schools across Canada could sponsor refugee families became the Dewson slogan. In September, the Dewson school community launched the “1000 Schools Challenge”, and developed a website that shares information about how to help schools get organized. It includes links to educational resources for teachers and families, frequently asked questions, and to-do lists and tools for organizers (surveys, pledge forms, logos).

The idea took off, and received considerable media coverage including on television, in the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star. Since going public in mid-September, Dewson has heard from school communities from Fredericton to Kamloops who want to get involved. Fifteen schools that we know of have already taken the challenge, and there are ongoing discussions in many more.

Bringing global citizenship curriculum to life

A key aspect of the 1000 Schools Challenge is how it brings curriculum expectations in the area of global citizenship to life in schools. Students have a chance to see and be involved in working together to make a difference locally in addressing a huge global problem—one that involves doing more than simply making a donation. Thinking one family at a time—talking about children like them in refugee camps—also helps to humanize the issues, emphasizing similarities rather than differences with those far away.

Older students are motivated to learn more about the conflict in Syria and the surrounding areas, and think about civic rights and responsibilities in a global frame. All students can engage actively in discussions about what it takes to make someone feel welcome, and what they can do to contribute to that outcome. It makes welcoming refugees and inclusivity more broadly part of the culture of the school.

If you are an educator or a teacher, we encourage you to connect with the 1000 School Challenge and see how you can get involved. There are many ways that parents, teachers, students, and school communities can take action.

How is your school preparing to welcome refugees?

Since 2011, more than 4 million Syrians have fled the country and 7.6 million more are internally displaced. Close to 3 million Syrian children and youth have been forced out of school as a result. Development gains in Syria have been reversed dramatically.

• In 2011, literacy rates for youth aged 15-24 hovered around 95%, and primary school enrollment was 91%.
• By the 2013/14 school year, primary school enrollment had plummeted to 38%.
• Today, enrollment rates in Aleppo are at 6%.

Those of us working in the Education in Emergencies field are familiar with the numbers. We know that in countries seeing an influx of refugees, there is a host government under strain. Many of our colleagues have been working tirelessly in Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey since 2011 to support access to quality education for Syrian refugees.

Recently, the thousands of Syrian refugees arriving each day on European shores and across borders have raised concerns about local capacity to provide adequate settlement services, including education.

While there is much attention, and rightly so, on the plight of the Syrian refugee community, it is important that we not lose sight of the fact that there are currently 16 million refugees globally – more than half of them children.

In Canada, our intake numbers have so far been low, but thanks to a groundswell of public support for the plight of the refugee community over the past few weeks, this is set to change. While the actual number of refugees that will be settled in Canada is yet to be determined, it is expected that up to 50% of the refugees will be children. Given the amount of time they have likely spent out of school and the harrowing experience of fleeing conflict in their home countries and leaving their loved ones behind, these children will need to be well supported to ensure their successful integration into the Canadian school system.

Much of the current discussion around the plight of the refugees is necessarily focused on the cost of their transit, arrival, and living stipends. At the same time, we need to look more closely at the support being provided in terms of accessing social services, including education. As Education in Emergencies practitioners, we know that education for refugees is:

• life-sustaining and life-saving, providing physical, social and cognitive protection
• vital to restoring dignity and hope
• allows children and youth to develop the skills and knowledge to become valuable contributors to their community and country

How are we ensuring refugees have access to critical education services, here at home?

Education services for newcomers in Canada

Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) sets policy and program direction for settlement services, and provides funding to community agencies that deliver settlement programs on behalf of the CIC. In elementary schools, we have programs like Settlement Workers in Schools (SWIS). In high schools, Newcomer Orientation Week programs are led by trained secondary school peer leaders who were once newcomers themselves. Many of these initiatives have been kept alive, with a smaller reach, in recent years through alternative funding sources. These innovative programs and others like them are critical for the integration of refugee families into Canadian communities. However, education settlement services have suffered cutbacks in recent years along with the larger package of settlement services.

Since 2005, millions have been cut from Canada’s immigration and settlement services budget. Millions more have been underspent. Over the lifespan of the 2005-2010 Canadian-Ontario Immigration Agreement, $207 million was underspent. Another $53 million was cut in 2010. Of this total, over 80% was pulled from Ontario, a province which receives more than half of all newcomers to Canada. Contracts with many service provider organizations were not renewed, and most agencies had to cut their budgets by 20-40%. Finally, over the last three years, the immigration department returned $350 million to the federal treasury, unspent.

Impacts of the cuts

Fewer parents and children receive the information they need. Settlement workers support parents to navigate the new school environment. Some of the many invaluable services they can provide include coordinating culturally appropriate interpretation and translation when helping to facilitate access to local services and identifying support for children struggling in school. Before 2010, there were individual settlement workers in many schools across Ontario. Today, settlement workers cover several schools and some schools do not have access to this type of support at all. Cuts have also impacted the Library Settlement Partnerships program offering workshops for newcomer families, one-on-one referrals and community outreach, eliminating the role of coordinator and reducing the program’s reach. 

Fewer peer leaders from the newcomer community in schools. Children are incredibly resilient. As we often reference in our international work, research on children’s psychosocial needs shows that only about 20% of children who have faced experiences of humanitarian crisis need intensive support. A supportive, family, community and school environment can help most children to cope effectively. Peer leaders especially can help refugee and newcomer children to connect with people who have had similar experiences. Innovative programs delivered through a partnership of settlement workers and school staff like Newcomer Orientation Week have downsized, from a full week of orientation to three days, and pool students from several schools. Fewer resources from CIC have also contributed to cuts to the Welcome and Information for Newcomers program for middle-school students resulting in fewer peer leaders per school.

Elimination of valuable oversight and coordination roles. Cuts have eliminated the position of the Ontario provincial coordinator for SWIS, which coordinates resources, training and promotion of the program in 19 Ontario school boards.

Long-term impacts of short-sighted funding. The program cuts in recent years have undermined the existing human capacity and infrastructure (including rent, phones, computers) capacity of immigrant and refugee-serving agencies to support newcomer families in the immediate term as outlined above. In the longer term, the cuts have resulted in lost capacity as experienced employees of these centres seek out other, more stable opportunities for employment. And even more broadly, cuts have forced agencies themselves to shift their focus towards addressing a different community need that is eligible for more predictable funding support. In some cases they even close down completely.  It will difficult to attempt to reestablish and expand a system of settlement support for newcomers that has been so adversely affected over the past five years.

What We’re Asking for…

A reinstatement of funding to pre-2010 levels, at a minimum, will go a long way to ensuring education programs serve the best interests of children, and support our schools in their efforts to welcome refugee children and their families into our communities. We are asking MPs to work together to develop a strategy that includes increased funding through the CIC budget.

TO TAKE ACTION YOU CAN: :  

1. Distribute this information widely (anyone you know working on refugee issues or in schools could be interested, even teachers)
2. Write a letter to your MP, using the template here. Find your MP here.
3. Get in touch if you’d like to be involved in future campaign work on this issue.

During the United Nations General Assembly in September, world leaders adopted the Global Sustainable Development Goals in New York. At no other time in recent history has the reality of these discussions and their implementation to address the needs of the global community been something so tangibly close to home.

References and Links for Further Information

1. Save the Children, CfBT Education Trust, American Institute for Research. March 2015. “The Cost of War: Calculating the impact of the collapse of Syria’s education system on Syria’s future.” Online.
2. OCASI. March 2011. “Background Information on CIC Cuts.” Online.
3. People for Education. April 2011. “Funding Cuts Devastate Programs for Young Newcomers.” Online.
4. USAID. January 2014. “The Fiscal Impact of the Refugee Crisis in Jordan”.
5. Operational Guidance Mental Health & Psychosocial Support Programming for Refugee Operations Online