By Greg Higgins

Living Skies Refuge fundraising to bring a Syrian family to North Battleford

Mar 7, 2016 | 11:26 AM

When Nicole Leinenweber first saw pictures of the body of Alan Kurdi, a three-year-old Syrian boy who washed up on the shore in the Mediterranean, she knew she had to try and help.

“I started to donate money and then I realized that may not be enough,” she said. Leinenweber created Living Skies Refuge specifically to bring a Syrian refugee family to North Battleford. “I started the Living Skies Refuge and since then hundreds of other children have been washing up in the Mediterranean.”

This will be the first refugee family from Syria to be brought to the Battlefords. Leinenweber has located a Kurdish family of four. The father is an electrician and the mother is a gym teacher. They have two children, a six-year-old boy and an eight-year-old girl.

“We’re looking to raise $50,000 and right now we are between $10-15,000 after just a few months of fundraising. We’re getting there, we’ve got a long ways to go but we’re getting there.”

According to Leinenweber the family is finishing their paper work. Once the paper work is done there will be a screening process. “They will go through security, criminal and medical checks. I expect them to check out on all of that.”

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Leinenweber has faced some backlash from people who are afraid of bringing extremists here and she understand their concerns. “Sometimes I think people are afraid because of all the terrorist attacks that are going on worldwide. That’s certainly a fear that’s based in true events that are happening and I can understand that.”

However, she’s confident the family won’t have any issues.

“I can say that this family, being a Kurdish family, the Kurds have been fighting ISIS from the beginning. This family fled from ISIS. They are not extremist thinkers. They are people who can be safely and securely be brought over and that’s the only refugees we would be taking.”

Leinenweber thinks they will be accepted. “Once people get to know people that are different from themselves all those prejudices and stereotypes kind of fall away because they realize that this is a good person.”

Once Living Skies Refuge brings the family over, acclimating them to Canada will be the hard part.

“We do have a settlement committee. We’ll be looking to settle them in everything from culture to education, employment, and schooling. We’re going to do it. We’re going to figure it all out.”

A major obstacle they’ll have to face is getting the fathers electrician license recognized. Leinenweber said they don’t know about that process at the moment, but it will be focused on later.

As for raising more money for the family, Living Skies Refuge has a big fundraiser planned on Saturday March. 12.

“We are going to have Fun Fair with a bouncy castle, face painting, lots of games. We encourage everyone to dress up if you don’t dress up we have some crafts to dress you up when you get here.”

The Fun Fair runs from 11 a.m.-3 p.m.

ghiggins@jpbg.ca

@realgreghiggins