Attendance: 16, including 4 guests: Viresh Mathur (visiting Rotarian from the Scarborough Bluffs Rotary Club), Parth and Nimmi Patel (visiting member and son from the Rotary Club of Pune Far East, India), and our guest speaker.
 
Anthem: Frank Allison
Grace: Peter Masson
Chair: President Gerd
 
Announcements:
 
- President Gerd provided wine for his last meeting of the Rotary year.
- Visiting Rotarian Viresh Mathur announced his club=s function at the Herongate Theatre.
- President Gerd exchanged Rotary banners with Nimmi Patel.
- Basil reminded us that our Club is hosting the swearing in ceremony for new Canadians on July 1st at Albert Campbell Square at the Scarborough Civic Centre. The ceremony is at noon, so please arrive between 11:00 and 11:30 am for the ceremony.
- Gerd received his 5th Paul Harris Fellowship pin, and then had the pleasure of awarding a Paul Harris Fellowship to Donna Salamalay for all of the great work she has done for our club and our community.
- Al Meredith is looking for volunteers to go on air at this year=s TV Auction broadcast.
 
There was no Marbelous Draw.
 
Sgt-at-Arms Barry Smith conducted an informal roast of out-going President Gerd, but he did such a fantastic job at the podium for two years, despite his bad jokes and English accent, that several club members made large folding money contributions to his fine so that no year end fine was levied upon him personally.
 
Barry also collected other Happy Bucks, including one from Arthur R. for his upcoming trip to the Sault Ste Marie and talk on the Zika virus.
 
Program:
 
Donna introduced our guest speaker, Lee Soda, Executive Director of Agincourt Community Services (ACSA). Lee spoke about ACSA=s contribution to re-settling many of the 25,000 Syrian refugees in the Scarborough area.
Lee explained that in November 2015 the federal government agreed to fast track 25,000 Syrian refugees, and this created a massive challenge for community agencies such as ACSA.
Lee discovered that refugees for our area were being accommodated at the Radisson Hotel at 401 and Victoria Park until they could be re-settled. ACSA therefore set out to find homes for these newcomers.
 
Private sponsors had stepped up and donated $40,000 per family to cover the newcomers= support for their first year in Canada, but many sponsors did not understand the sponsor=s obligations beyond this monetary payment. Accordingly, many newcomers were not even picked up by their sponsors from the airport, and others required other services from their sponsors, such as familiarizing them with Toronto, enrolling their children into schools, and finding accommodation for some families that were as large as 8-10 people. When about one third of the private sponsors reneged on these obligations, ACSA had to step in to re-settle as many as they could of the 500 families who were awaiting re-settlement in Scarborough and the surrounding area. About half of this number was re-settled in North York and the 905 area, but the balance had to be re-settled in Scarborough.
The newcomers were so thankful to the private sponsors for putting up the funds to bring them to Canada that they did not report their sponsors for reneging on their other obligations. These sponsors could have faced criminal charges for reneging on their legal obligations. ACS therefore had to provide the services that these private sponsors should have provided.
The newcomers, upon completing their screening process, entered our society with a permanent residence card and health card and were therefore no longer refugees, but they were prohibited from obtaining social assistance for one year following their entry into Canada, because their support was supposed to be covered by their sponsors. The federal government also did not increase funding to ACS in order for them to step in and deal with this newcomer support crisis.
Notwithstanding that they had no additional funding, ACS managed the crisis by increasing their part-time support network, calling on partners such as the food bank to increase their contributions, including increasing food bank hours, reaching out for support from local businesses, conducting food and clothes drives, and arranging additional Syrian interpreters to assist with the project. Housing and employment were the largest challenges. As a result of their hard work in the first quarter of 2016, ACS met all of its targets.
Right now, ACS is looking for the donation of refurbished computers for the newcomers, especially so that their children can do their homework on evenings when the libraries are closed and their public computers are not available.
President Gerd stepped in to thank Lee and in the process presented her with a cheque from the Club for $500 to be used towards ACSA=s valuable work in the Scarborough community.
 
The meeting was terminated
 
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