This holiday season the Maple Grove United refugee volunteers have been hard at work completing the many forms the government requires to sponsor a family. These forms include an assessment of sponsors, budgets, detailed information about the families and their relatives and stories of how the refugees came to need to escape. All of the families the three churches, – Munn’s United Church, Knox Presbyterian Church, and Maple Grove United Church, – are sponsoring share one thing in common: staying in Afghanistan was not an option. Not only would it mean the females in the family would not have any opportunity, it was likely the family would be killed by the Taliban.
Since our last announcement, two of the families have escaped to Pakistan and the third will be sponsored out of Afghanistan by the American government as the son of the family attends the American University elsewhere in the Middle East. We are now taking on a different third family as there are thousands begging for help. These are Hazara Afghanis who had already escaped to Pakistan. They are a people prioritized as refugees to Canada as they suffer extreme discrimination and violence due to their ethnicity. Maple Grove has taken on this family with the assistance of a local neighbourhood group interested in assisting in the cause. We are in regular contact with all three families and working diligently to get the paperwork done. Your assistance thus far has been a godsend. Please share this story with your friends and neighbours in order that we have the means to accomplish our goals.
To donate, just follow one of these steps:
- Go to the Maple Grove United Church website https://maplegroveunitedchurch.org and press the “Please DONATE here” button at the bottom of the first page, click on “Afghani Refugees”.
- Drop a cheque off at the church. There is a drop-box on the brick wall near the doors off the parking lot at the back of the building.
- Mail a cheque marked “Afghanistan refugee fund” to Maple Grove United Church, 346 Maple Grove Road, Oakville, Ontario, L6J 4V5.
100% of donations will go to the families’ needs as there are no administration or overhead costs. Everyone involved is a volunteer. All donors will receive a tax receipt.
