A program helping new Canadians learn English and integrate into the Sunshine Coast is starting a new chapter as a community partnership, ensuring continued support for immigrants and refugees wanting to call the Coast their home.
Starting on June 1, the Sunshine Coast branch of the Welcoming Communities program – which began six years ago – officially relaunches as a joint venture between Capilano University and the Sunshine Coast Resource Centre, funded by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and BC Settlement and Integration Services.
Virginia Perez, who was a participant in the program when she first arrived from Spain, is now the settlement and outreach coordinator for Welcoming Communities Sunshine Coast.
“The program helped me a lot. I found my friends there. I had the opportunity to learn English for free,” she said in a media release on the announcement. “In my case, it helped me be integrated into the community, super quickly.“
She said the most important thing for newcomers is learning about Canadian culture, in order to develop social networks and find jobs.
According to the most recent census data, 5,600 people living on the Coast define themselves as immigrants. That’s roughly 20 per cent of the Sunshine Coast’s total population.
With the new partnership, Perez said, programming will continue to give newcomers and immigrants a much-needed hand building skills and knowledge for success in Canada. She currently has 130 people actively registered with the program and is always looking for more.
Pat Hunt, board co-chair at the Resource Centre, said she is excited to partner with Capilano University on the program.
“Our goal at the Resource Centre is to help all community members find the services they need to succeed in the face of life’s challenges, whether big or small,” she said. “We see the Welcoming Communities program as a great fit with our vision to create an informed and connected community.”
Trudi Diening, the Sunshine Coast program manager for Welcoming Communities at Capilano University’s kálax-ay Sunshine Coast campus, echoed Hunt’s excitement.
“Capilano University and the Resource Centre are working together to make the transition as comfortable as possible for those newly arrived by providing language instruction, settlement assistance and community connection activities.”
Diening said connecting newcomers to job skill development programs is also part of the program’s mandate.
Capilano University coordinates three branches of the federally and provincially funded program, one on the Sunshine Coast, another in Squamish, and the third in Whistler/Pemberton.
Since COVID-19 hit, the program’s English classes, as well as cultural offerings like yoga and cooking classes, have all gone online. Despite some challenges, said Perez, there are silver linings.
She said the online offerings have encouraged collaboration with the other branches for activities like yoga and cooking classes, forging new friendships across Howe Sound, and up the Sea-to-Sky Corridor, that might not have otherwise happened.
Perez also said she can accommodate more people in her classes, so she’s able to encourage more non-immigrants to join, as a way to reach out and “meet” newcomers.
“These classes are for new Canadians, but everybody’s welcome. The idea with the program is that the newcomers are connecting with the community, so especially now that it is online, it is open to everybody,” she said.
An upcoming collaboration with the Gibsons Public Library is Perez’s current focus. She hopes many will tune in during the coming weeks for a professional flamenco presentation put on by a dancer who now calls the Coast home.
For more information and to register for classes, visit www.resourcecentre.ca/welcomingcommunities or contact Virginia at [email protected] or by phone at 604-212-0422.
