Community members can help newcomer families who came to Canada as government-assisted refugees (GARs) to get settled in Kingston.
We are looking for eager and committed volunteers to support refugee families and to help them connect to the community. We are also looking for volunteers with particular language skills to provide informal language interpretation.
Volunteer opportunities:
1. Family Support Team
A volunteer Family Support Team (often 2 to 4 people) works to provide social support and friendship to a newcomer family who have come to Canada as government-assisted refugees.
Typical activities include providing conversational English support, introducing the family to fun and affordable events and opportunities in the community, helping the family learn where to shop, along with other social and informal activities.
Volunteers will need to commit to working with a refugee family for 6 months, at approximately 2 hours per week.
Volunteers can provide valuable tutoring and practice for adults, children, and youth who are learning English. KEYS offers one-on-one and group tutoring opportunities in classroom environments and conversational formats.
3. Ongoing Programs
KEYS offers several volunteer-supported ongoing programs that provide social engagement and support and a chance for refugees to learn and practice English.
It is helpful to have volunteers who speak languages also spoken by our newcomer refugee families. Some of these include Arabic, Farsi/Dari, Pashto, Swahili, Somali, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Tigrinya, Amharic, Kurdish, Turkish, French and Spanish. Other languages may become relevant as families from different regions arrive in Kingston.
All volunteers with us must:
- work collaboratively with people from diverse backgrounds, including newcomer families from other countries and volunteers with different perspectives and experiences
- commit to anti-racism, promote inclusion, and welcome diverse communities
- commit to building the self-sufficiency and autonomy of newcomer families
- attend a volunteer orientation and training session
- secure a Vulnerable Sector Check clearance from their local police station
Please fill out this form and we will contact you with more information and next steps.
Volunteer with Refugees
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