“The grassroots created Refugee 613.”

Like many larger cities in Canada, Ottawa was starting from a foundation rich in services and expertise, much of it born from serving the Vietnamese refugees in the early 1980s. Funded by the federal and provincial governments, the local settlement sector offered scores of programs and services for immigrants and refugees across more than 10 agencies, including the Catholic Centre for Immigrants, the Ottawa Community Immigrant Services Organization (OCISO), Jewish Family Services, the Lebanese Arab Social Services Association, the Immigrant Women’s Services Organization, the Economic & Social Council of Ottawa-Carleton (CESOC) and more. The community health and resource centres, food banks, school boards and municipal government all had experience serving newcomers. The Ottawa Local Immigration Partnership (OLIP) helped to pull the players together, encouraging collaboration to fill gaps in service.

But in those early weeks of September, 2015, the scale of public interest in helping Syrians quickly proved overwhelming. Agencies found their phones ringing off the hook with questions and offers of help, from individuals, politicians, journalists and other organizations. Where can we donate, and what is needed? How can we volunteer? What is private sponsorship, and how do we get involved? What services are there for new arrivals and how do we find them? How can our school/team/office be part of the welcome?

Soon the professionals were spending precious time answering the need for information about refugees who hadn’t even arrived yet, instead of meeting the needs of the clients already here.

People started looking for ways to bring some order to the chaos. Phone calls and emails flew between experts and organizers, all with the same goal: let’s make our efforts greater than the sum of their parts, let’s welcome the highest number of refugees we can, to the best of our abilities.

You could see community being built in front of your eyes.

Within days of Alan Kurdi’s photo igniting public interest, a grassroots group coalesced around conversations between Jack McCarthy, then executive director of the Somerset West Community Health Centre, Carl Nicholson, executive director of the Catholic Centre for Immigrants, Leslie Emory, executive director of the settlement agency OCISO, and Louisa Taylor, a former journalist with experience covering immigration and refugees. They quickly pulled in leaders in private sponsorship, volunteering, faith communities and housing advocacy, to form a working group.

“What we heard around that table was that we would do more and do better as a community, and it would be easier on everybody, if we had an information hub or a platform that could help frontline service providers talk to the public and to each other, to collaborate,” says Leslie. “So we developed a model to do three things: inform, connect and inspire more action.”

The group worked at breakneck speed, developing a vision, governance structure, name, logo and website in under three weeks. Throughout, they consulted with local political leaders, leading to strong partnerships with Mayor Jim Watson and MPP Yasir Naqvi from the beginning.

“We asked the Mayor to endorse our efforts and he was hugely enthusiastic, and Yasir Naqvi helped us immensely behind the scenes,” says Louisa. “The grassroots created Refugee 613, and we were proud that our political leaders got out in front of the issue and said ‘Our city welcomes refugees.’”

Mayor Watson arranged for Refugee 613 to publicly launch at his October 1, 2015 forum on refugees, attended by more than 1,000 people. Overnight Refugee 613 became the go-to resource for the general public, fielding hundreds of calls and emails a day, connecting people to resources and organizing working groups to help people coordinate their activities. At that point the project was still mainly volunteer-driven, with dozens of people from the settlement, health and voluntary sectors setting aside their normal duties to jump into action on the Syrian effort. Agencies and City Hall also provided in-kind support to help with volunteer management and removing roadblocks.

It quickly became clear that Refugee 613 needed full-time staff to meet the demand. The Ottawa Community Foundation identified an anonymous donor who provided seed funding, and Yasir Naqvi helped secure sustaining funds from the Province of Ontario. In late November, Louisa became the project’s director and hired a project coordinator. For most of its first year, Refugee 613 was a team of just two full-time staff members leveraging the talents and time of an army of allies. Their motto became: We don’t provide frontline services, we support the people who do.

The first few Syrian refugees began to trickle in by late December. By January, more than 100 refugees were arriving each week, a hectic pace that did not slow down until the end of March. Representatives from partners across the city came to Refugee 613’s regular Stakeholder Committee meetings to share updates, collaborate and fill gaps. Project staff worked with the local advocacy group for private sponsorship, the Coalition in Ottawa for Refugees, to host popular training workshops for the hundreds of new sponsorship groups that sprang up. Jack McCarthy of Somerset West CHC led the Refugee 613 Health task force, bringing together settlement agencies, health centres, hospitals, the paramedic service and Ottawa Public Health to plan the community’s medical response. Working with the Catholic Centre for Immigrants, they made sure the government-assisted refugees received medical attention in their temporary shelters and were connected to family doctors as soon as possible. Drawing on her journalism background, Louisa became a frequent voice in local media, explaining what was happening, what was known and unknown, freeing up the settlement experts to focus on their clients.

“From that moment in September, for the next 8 months, the speed at which everything moved was just unbelievable,” says Louisa. “Every door was wide open, and every day there were these amazing exchanges and connections. You could see community being built in front of your eyes.”

“The Syrians brought us together, but we’ve never been just about Syrians — Refugee 613 has always helped refugees from all countries, whether they were resettled or came here as claimants,” says Louisa. “There are all kinds of people in our community who now know each other and know where to go to get help, because of this massive effort.”

Refugee 613 plans to continue its work to inform, connect and inspire the Ottawa community for at least two more years.

“Someone once said to me that unleashing compassion strengthens communities,” adds Jack. “Refugee 613 is about giving that compassion a place to go, to contribute and to make our community better.”