#kinbrace

The stories Loren Balisky, Executive Director at Kinbrace, hears from refugees seeking out his help are often stories of arduous journeys, war-torn home towns and family members left behind.

To help refugee claimants recover from trauma and start their new life in Canada, Kinbrace Refugee Housing & Support has been providing housing and education for the last 18 years. But even more than providing services, Loren and his team strive to “welcome well” and make people feel at home.   

Accordingly, the two townhouses that make up Kinbrace’s headquarters look nothing like your average shelter and more like typical East Van family homes. A cozy kitchen, living room and common area overlook a big backyard. The backyard is shared with the neighbouring apartment building that houses newly arrived refugees. Some chickens are clucking away in a coop and a small, black cat greets newcomers by gently brushing against their legs.

Many refugees who stay at Kinbrace are used to growing their own food and living with animals, Loren explains. To make people feel more at ease, the organization decided to raise chickens and grow a vegetable garden.

Refugees usually stay between three and six months before moving on to permanent housing, Loren says, but the relationships built at Kinbrace often last much longer and can become life-long friendships.

We talked to Loren about the challenges faced by refugee claimants and what Canadians can do to foster integration.

On the richness of living together: I worked with Kinbrace for 18 years. I really enjoy the richness that the community offers and the opportunity to live together with people from around the world in very simple human ways — from eating food to drinking tea to playing soccer together. It’s a good place.

On being an outsider: I was born in Ethiopia and grew up there.

Ethiopia was going through a communist revolution at the time, so I witnessed a lot of human rights abuses as a child. I had no language for it at the time, but it was gut turning. Now living at the other end receiving people coming out of difficult situations like persecution or war, I think my own story has given me an interesting perspective.

On refugee claimants: Our mandate is to welcome refugee claimants. That’s different from government-assisted refugees who are brought here from overseas to Canada, or privately sponsored refugees who are brought here by the citizens of this country. We are responding to the needs of the people who arrive at the border and say ‘we need help, we need protection.’

On housing for refugee claimants: Kinbrace provides housing to 25-30 refugee claimants per year, usually the most vulnerable.

There was no housing for refugee claimants when we started in 1998. Thankfully there are a few other organizations now that have stepped in specifically for refugee claimants, but the need is still way larger than the number of beds that are available.

On statistics: Two years ago, there was a UN document saying there are about 45 million displaced people in the world. Today, it’s 60 million people. That’s a huge, staggering number. The number of asylum seekers has doubled in the same timeframe from about a million two years ago to two million people today. It’s definitely a crisis. 

On reason for leaving home: People love their homes. Nobody wants to leave their home. When it comes to forced migration and displacement, it’s just sheer survival.

On listening to global issues: I’m certainly attentive to the challenges we have in Canada: the many unresolved issues of ongoing colonialism and people being pushed to the edges. We need to be responding to that, but I think our world is so small now. We need to listen to what is happening on the other side of it, because it does have an impact on all of us, including Canada.

On entry ways into Canada: Most people come in as families in ones and twos across the US border, either on valid visas or smuggled. We’ve heard stories of incredible journeys to get here. Sometimes they don’t even know that they are in Canada. They just walked through the forests and kept walking.

On leaving family behind: People who arrive here are very grateful for protection and for a new opportunity, but they carry a lot of guilt, because they’ve left family members behind.

On people smuggling: There’s a lot of trauma that people come with from their country of origin or even the journey to get here to Canada. If you don’t have the right documents then you end up being moved around through smuggling circles. There’s just a lot of exploitation and risk that’s involved in that. And fear. God. The fear people live with. It’s unbelievable.

One family was smuggled abroad and got separated. The 15-year old daughter with two younger siblings arrived in Canada first and the parents arrived a month later. The oldest son was completely separated and ended up in Turkey. It took years to finally reunite the family. So besides the stress of seeking refugee protection they also had to worry about their child who was lost in the big wide world.

On daily struggles: When refugees come here, depending on where they come from, struggle with: How does an electric stove work? What’s the purpose of a fridge? How do I eat food from the food bank? Many people who come through Kinbrace must learn how to subsist on food banks, but the the idea that you would store food in a can is just bizarre to some cultures.

There’s that whole complicated new world from the nuances of culture to language to the very complex legal and bureaucratic refugee protection system.

On READY Tours: In 2008, we developed READY Tours.

From talking to people, we realized they didn’t know what to anticipate at their own hearing: Who is going to be in the room? What questions would be asked? So we thought the simplest thing would be for people to get right into a refugee hearing room and see and learn.

On the dangers of us-versus-them: For any newcomer to a country it’s not easy to settle in. If we’re setting up barriers and we’re creating an us-versus-them mentality from the get go, that’s really dangerous. We have to understand that integration is a long-term engagement, so that we don’t end up in situations like Belgium and France.

On welcoming well: Welcoming well acknowledges the full humanity of people who seek refugee protection. It just honours them. We need to understand them as fellow human beings and say to them ‘I have no agenda for your life, but I care about you and here’s a path. Go for it.’

On refugees’ dream of a normal life: What most refugees really want is to be just normal people who live normal lives. People long to be just your neighbour and forget their refugee story. It’s often an undignified story and there’s a lot of pain associated with it.

On changing roles: We have to be careful to allow our roles and refugees’ roles to change. People who live at Kinbrace need housing and support when they arrive to start the integration process, but 10 years later they are business owners and movers and shakers in our community. They don’t see themselves that way anymore and are fully integrated into the economic fabric.

On Canadians and generosity: I really do trust in Canadians’ generosity.  We have an incredibly generous heart. Fear can turn it off. Security concerns can turn it off, but I think the gift we have in Canada is the capacity to welcome each other as equals and to continue on that journey together. I’m very grateful for that.