Skip to content

Supporting Refugees

Accompanying refugees and displaced people at home and abroad

 

International

PWRDF support refugees, internally displaced people and stateless people in other parts of the world through our Development Programs and Humanitarian Response and Disaster Relief work. 


In Canada

PWRDF supports Canadian Anglicans sponsoring refugees through the PWRDF Refugee Network.

There are currently 15 Anglican dioceses that are Sponsorship Agreement Holders (SAHs). Each of those SAHs has a Refugee Coordinator and once a year they gather as the PWRDF Refugee Network to exchange information, network and strategize immediately prior to an annual meeting between all Canadian SAHs and the government (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada – IRCC).

The coordinators are a mix of volunteers with a few full- or part-time paid staff. Most receive some financial support from their diocese, but some do not. All have been overwhelmed both by the numbers of sponsorships undertaken in the past two years, by the generosity of Anglicans specifically and Canadians generally, and all continue to struggle to say no to the ongoing reality that demand still exceeds capacity.

As of December 2016, and with data from 13 of the 15 SAHs gathered, statistics indicated 2,442 refugees had arrived in Canada via the SAH program and a further 2,088 were waiting to arrive. Many of those are Syrians, but they are from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Rwanda and Burundi.