Field Experience, Essay Example

Introduction

Calgary Catholic Immigration Society (CCIS) operates as a non-profit making community based organization. Its areas of involvement include settlement of refugees and immigrants in the Southern Regions of Alberta Province. It also provides the immigrants with integration services in the province. Its profile includes an experience of 32 years in the design and delivery of resettlement and integration programs of high quality to the refugees as well as the immigrants. It slogan “Our Community Our Future” confirms its commitment to serving the community. It assists in resettling immigrants and refugees temporarily, for about 4 months and three weeks before assisting them to locate their relatives in Canada. The Federal Reserve of the Canadian Government funds the program (Laszkiewicz, 2012).

Achievement

The organization has made a milestone of achievement in the service delivery through a dynamic team of professionals. Its work force consists of competent multilingual and multicultural team that operates in many disciplines. The professionals for example are able to use 62 different languages. They have the capacity to offer many specialized services designed to enhance the settlement and the process of integration. This diversity gives them strength to deliver competent services to their clients and the entire community with the most needed help. Additionally, CCIS has more than 2,000 voluntary workers who dedicate their efforts to assisting the new refugees and immigrants.

Discussion of challenge to understanding

The challenge to understanding has an inherent high risk, which has been mitigated by the ability of the professionals to speak many languages. They are also acquainted to the expectations of many disciplines and cultures. The organization is divided into several specialized departments such as

• Employment and Training Department
• Community development and integration department
• Family and Child Department
• Integration and resettlement program
• Health and wellness
• Brooks and County Immigration Department

The departments require enormous funding to manage. This is where it continuously has to struggle and ensure sustainability of its funding.

Relevant Research

The program is relevant in handling youths issues, which have appeared to be a global challenge and a big issue to the successfully and integrated society. As they manage these youth by associating them with others students from various races, the agency fights the racial segregation, solving more challenges than were first in its plans. In a similar manner, the agency enables immigrants and refugees to access relevant information inside the settlement camps while they wait for immigration plans to move them to Canada. Ultimately, the agency assists them to find their relatives living in Canada.

Truly speaking, this agency is essential for the troubled immigrants. After undergoing tortures and persecutions of many forms, they are in dire need of counseling. The refugees are forced to compromise to certain conditions of their lives that put their lives, integrity and value at stake. Some people view refugees as threats, perceiving them as people who are out to take their jobs and render them jobless. To that effect, these people mistreat the refugees.

Context (Agency)

The CCIS agency does not have adequate time to prepare for the emergencies that lead to people becoming refugees. This is because the events leading to the emergencies are of high impact, yet the probability of predicting them is almost zero. This is a serious challenge making the situation vulnerable. Even with the deficiencies of resources, the response to the refugee challenge is inevitable. The target groups comprise of people from different religion. As an organization, it is, therefore forced to break the religious boundaries owing to the agency of the issue at hand. Being a non-governmental organization, the agency does not advocate for a particular religion, not even the catholic religious affairs. It does not matter the kind of prayers people make in their facilities (Goodwin, 2011). During the normal occasions, it is evident that, as a non-governmental organization, it allows other religions to pray within the facilities. The CCIS agency also helps the refugees with counseling no matter their affiliation to societies or their racial status. It is apparent that refugees came from various refugee camps. They majorly escape from persecution as well as torture in the camps that had been thought to be of assistance to them. There is then need to act urgently in this situation to restore the confidence of the refugees about the CCIS.

Health, Equity and Social Action Concepts

CCIS agency has clinics within the institution, whose staff offer clinical as well as psychological counseling services. This is a good deal of preparation to manage humanitarian disasters when they occur. The clinical workers are committed to their mandate in offering the psychological and mental counseling to stabilize the minds of immigrants and to give them the confidence to continue living. The most needed health and social assistance is with the mind (McLellan, 2009). The counseling proceeds to eliminate the elements of cultural influence among the immigrants.

The organization assists the immigrants with vital information to overcome barriers related to linguistics, culture and access to employment in Canada. The cultural and language diversity enables the target groups to receive enough assistance. The immigrants stand chances to acquire sponsorship. What is intriguing is that even adults have chances to study and seize the rare opportunity.

In order to encourage equity, the courses have to be taught in a common language, English. It has to empower both genders and people of different ages towards equality and social action. The agency mobilizes the community volunteers to facilitate their involvement in the community through. The mobilization encourages new workers to partners with the agency to participate in community outreach activities including multicultural education sponsorship integration and health services. The classes are very essential for adult education programs for many families and seniors.

Conclusion / Summary

The findings in this research are comprehensive in exposing the challenges that the CCIS agency faces during its services to the displaced members of the society. It recognizes the urgent situations, which can force people to turn into refugees and have to live away from their usual homes. It gives a detailed explanation of the programs in place to manage the challenges of immigrants in the camps. It, however, fails to explain the sustainability of the sources of funding for the program that enables it manage all aspects of the refugees, considering the long periods, which the immigrants have to live with other cultures. It would be recommended that the report explore other possible sources of funding to sustain its future operations. According to the review, the greatest key that the CCIS has offered to the refugees is information, which empowers them with long-term benefits.

References

Goodwin, D. (2011). Citizens of nowhere: from refugee camp to Canadian campus. Ontario: Doubleday Canada, Limited.

Laszkiewicz, J. (2012). 333 DAYS: Personal memoirs from a refugee camp. Montreal: Trafford Publishing.

McLellan, J. (2009). Cambodian refugees in Ontario: resettlement, religion, and identity. Toronto: University of Toronto.