Like many Squamish residents, Geraldine Guilfoyle and Pam Gliatis are moved by the TV images of the refugees fleeing Syria, and they want to help.
“Children were having to fight each other for milk,” said Gliatis, describing what she had seen recently on the evening news. “It wasn’t just the picture of the [dead] child on the beach for me… it could be any of us, who had to flee for our lives.”
About 12 million Syrians – more than half the country’s population – have fled their homes due to the violence and conflict that began in 2011, and half of those fleeing are children, according to World Vision. More than four million Syrians have fled to neighbouring countries, the agency reported.
As of mid-September, about 4,000 children were travelling to Europe alone, but there could be as many as 8,000 unaccompanied children, according to World Vision.
Guilfoyle and Gliatis have decided to organize a public meeting to discuss possible local responses to the crisis, which is the largest movement of refugees since the Second World War.
“Communities across Canada are responding in large and small ways, and this is an opportunity for us to work together to do so as well,” reads a news release written by the two Squamish women.
Guilfoyle was involved with bringing a refugee family into Canada about 10 years ago, when she lived in Winnipeg. The Manitoba Interfaith Refugee Council, of which Guilfoyle was a member, brought in a woman and her son who had fled civil war in Sierra Leone.
“The government will sponsor a whole pile of refugees, and then you’ve got families who sponsor their family members, but then there’s these private sponsorships that are usually out there for [refugees] who haven’t gotten picked up,” she said. “They still desperately need to get in.”
Guilfoyle said it took a year to bring that family into Canada.
Overall, it was a great experience, Guilfoyle said, and she is still in touch with the woman, who visited her in Squamish. “She is absolutely an amazingly strong woman,” Guilfoyle said. “She had been in a pretty harsh situation.”
It is part of Guilfoyle’s Bahá’í faith to help others, she said.
“There is a quote that says, ‘The Earth is but one country and mankind its citizens,’ and that explains it,” she said. “We just need to see each other as one human family.”
The Squamish Welcome Centre and Settlement Service are convening the community meeting with the support of the District of Squamish and other volunteers.
“We have a lot of resources in this community that a lot of other small communities don’t have,” said Guilfoyle.
“There is no real agenda here except there’s a lot of people who are concerned, and so rather than everybody thinking and trying to work in isolation in terms of what they might do, maybe we can pool ideas and share information and experiences.”
The meeting will be held on Saturday (Oct. 3) from 10 a.m. to noon at the Squamish Adventure Centre.
