MATTHEW HOUSE
You’ve seen the stories on the news – refugees arriving in Canada, harried, scared but relieved to find a safe place, away from war and terror. These are one type of refugee. Officially, Canada will welcome up to 505,000 of these sponsored refugees each year and will assist with their housing, employment, orientation and assimilation.
However, there’s another type of refugee. Though also fleeing violence or persecution from their home country, no one will be welcoming them at the airport; offering them assistance or showing them the ropes. These are asylum seekers, refugee “claimants” and although legally allowed to enter Canada, they receive no formal support until they complete the legal hearing process and are granted the status of refugee, a complex legal process that can take two to three years.
The heartbreak is, many times, in those two years, the distress these refugees are escaping is replaced by isolation, confusion and homelessness that can come from navigating the high cost of living in a new country on meagre resources. Things often go from bad, to worse, with catastrophic consequences. As of October, 2023, refugee claimants make up a third (approximately 4,000) of the 11,000 or so people in Toronto's shelter system.
This is where Matthew House comes in. For the last 25 years, Matthew House has quietly been providing a place to sleep, food to eat and social, emotional and legal support to some of the world’s most vulnerable asylum seekers.
Honestly, can we digress here for just one second? Can you believe the level of human love poured out in service to others that we at DO Philanthropy get to work alongside? It’s profoundly humbling.
In the middle of Toronto, one of the most expensive cities in the world, Matthew House currently has six, soon to be seven, houses providing an oasis of calm for refugee claimants. Two are dedicated for youth – who, increasingly, are becoming the bulk of the world’s refugees - with volunteer live-in “mentors”. The others are for single mothers, men and women from all nations, each with its own live-in mentors who help knit this cobbled-together group of people from many different nations into a family.
If these refugees have left everything, in many ways, so have the house-mentors. These are volunteers who have left their possessions, left their privacy, left their time, their leisure and their comfortable lives to make a home with the displaced.
Of course, they fall in love. And they stay for years.
Although none of them regards their service as anything but deeply meaningful, those of us watching can’t help but be both stirred and challenged by the depth of their commitment to loving others with a such a selfless, extraordinary generosity.
Other than love, one of the most fascinating and powerful things Matthew House offers refugees is their cutting edge, hearing simulation program, “Recourse”. Recourse has been refined over 25 years with the assistance of social workers and immigration lawyers and helps refugees prepare for their turn in front of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada to determine whether they will be allowed a future in Canada or deported. As you can imagine, it’s a stressful, intimidating process. “Recourse” ensures they are physically and emotionally prepared and have every opportunity to clearly, truthfully and effectively share their story.
We are so moved by the work Matthew House does, and with all our hearts, we commend this charity to you. “Refugee funds” established at moments of crisis are fine, and, we should add, needed. But please consider also supporting the faithful people who are doing this crucial work in your own back yard, year in, year out with some of those same persecuted people.
When you engage, we believe you, too, will fall in love.