Edmonton's churches, Syrian community work to bring more refugees

The photograph of a dead boy washed up on a Mediterranean beach is a stark reminder to one Edmonton family of the horrors they left behind.

Ghada Al-Adhami has been here with her husband for six years.

In March, they were able to bring more family members to the city. Reunited, they all live together now in a north-side home.

Al-Adhami said she hopes that now, while the eyes of the world are on her homeland, more can be done to save hundreds of thousands of refugees trying to flee war-torn Syria.

"Our family is now here, feeling safe," she said. "They feel new hope, new home. They can work, they can build a future for children."

The tragic story of the Kurdi family shocked people around the world. But its emotional impact was felt most deeply, perhaps, by those who have already escaped a brutal war that has torn their country apart.

"They escaped from death … to death," Al-Adhami said of the family of Abdullah Kurdi, whose wife and two young sons drowned while trying to escape to Greece.

Donna Entz is a support worker at the Mennonite Centre for Newcomers who helps refugees and other recent immigrants.

She has been in Edmonton since 2010, and has met and worked with several Syrian and Iraqi families who've fled the wars. Her experiences led her to a big question she had to ask herself.

"How, really, can we be helping Syrian refugees? And one day it just became clear that we needed to set up some kind of partnerships, and make contact with Muslim communities in the city, in order for the refugees to come."

The churches were somewhat "blocked" in their efforts, she said.

Immigration offices normally refer people, so churches can sponsor them.

"And that's how a lot of refugees have come to Canada," said Entz. "But right now the (immigration) offices weren't doing that, and the only way to get refugees from Syria to Canada was to work with their relatives, so that we could name refugees."

To get around that roadblock, her group formed a partnership with the Edmonton Council for Muslim Communities and Islamic Social Services.

Entz said it was natural for her, because she lived much of her life in a Muslim village in Africa.

Al-Adhami's relatives were the first people brought to Edmonton under the new partnership.

"It was so exciting to see this family reunited," Entz said. "But then we also hear that there's still family that's back there. There's so much that we need to do. Canada could be doing so much better."

There should be two ways that organizations like her church can bring people over, she said.

Immigration Canada could pass on names of people who have made it as far as Lebanon or Jordan. Then churches could sponsor them.

But that isn't happening, Entz said.

"It's the biggest refugee crisis in the world, but the Canadian offices are not naming anybody. So that's what needs to change."

If the change was made, she said, families could sponsor relatives and churches could also bring in people.