It was standing room only at Trent’s Wenjack Theatre as over 400 community members gathered for the Refugee Symposium, an evening of learning, discussion and brainstorming on how to work towards the successful integration of Syrian refugee families into the Peterborough community.

“So many of our community agencies are working together with the shared goal of creating a welcoming environment for refugees, specifically to lay the groundwork for our new citizens to be successful in building a new life here,” explained Melanie Sedge,  Trent University’s representative on the Peterborough Refugee Resettlement Task Force. “This includes every aspect of integrating new Canadians, from education and health, housing and finances, employment, language and everything in between. Peterborough is an outstanding example of what a community can do when it pulls together and I am proud that Trent University is a part of this important collaboration.” 

Outside of the additional fundraising support of the #TrentUHelps campaign which ran this past fall and raised the funds to sponsor three Syrian students in 2016 through the World University Service of Canada Student Refugee Program (WUSC SRP), members of the Trent community have raised their hand to extend support to the cause in many other ways. Trent will be providing admissions and enrolment support, as well as ESL for Syrian Refugees of university age through the Trent International Program (TIP), a furniture donation drive will be led by the Trent Central Student Association at the end of the semester and Trent has offered to provide space at no charge for private sponsorship groups to use at Trent’s downtown campus.

Khaled Aldawodi, a recent graduate from Trent’s Business Administration program is also leading a group of Arabic-speaking Trent students in providing interpretation and support services to community sponsoring groups and refugee families.

“I know Arabic and I am from the Middle East, I know how Syrians are suffering and I thought to myself, I would like to help,” explains Mr. Aldawodi. “While working at the TIP office I approached Dr. Mike Allcott about how my background could help. He advised me to attend a local meeting to share a few of my ideas and from there our group grew. We now have 14 Arabic-speaking people in the group that will be meeting with new refugees.”