The harvest season-Canada
Autumn is the harvest season. So it was for us during the year 2019.
When the government started to support financially home care in Quebec and launched the project of “Local Centres of Community Services”, our communities were asked to contribute and several among us helped to carry out this service to the people.
In order to stay in touch with families and the neighbourhood, the communities started to show real creativity. This is how several organisations were born where we were present, and after we left, they were taken over by local people.
In autumn 2019, the Family Animation Centre at Gatineau celebrated its 45 years of existence in the Ruisseau neighbourhood.
The Hirondelle celebrated its 40th anniversary: this is a service which welcomes and helps immigrants to integrate. Sr Kateri (Mariette Roberge), in partnership with the Bishop of Montréal, had been working on this settlement with two women who felt challenged by the massive arrival of refugees and immigrants, mostly from the Asian south-east.
And on the 21st of September, the board of the Baobab Familial, came together to celebrate the 20th anniversary of this organisation which gathered families of the Côte-des-Neiges neighbourhood in Montréal. A meeting with the founders was planned in order to recall the history of this organisation. With Mireille Fortin, Liette Norbert and myself, we attended a Tribute Celebration full of gratitude and joy.
The Baobab Familial
The Baobab Familial was born in the Côte-des-Neiges neighbourhood where an LSA community lived. One of them, Marie-Paule Lebrun (now deceased) had a dream of opening a shelter for immigrant families.
She went to all the streets and parks in the neighbourhood, and thanks to her contacts with existing entities, her intuition became more a reality. She then formed a work team with 3 other LSAs: Marielle Gagnon, Linda Lee Caron and myself.
Moreover, in this proximity approach, it seemed meaningful to have a lay person from another origin to join the team. Marie-Rosaire: a Congolese woman. She was assigned as manager.
The goal was clearly stated from the beginning: “to integrate local people into the project so that they can take over the project when the time comes.” It took many team meetings to officially register the body, then to define the families’ needs, to make grants applications, etc.
Here is what Marie-Rosaire expresses about her experience:
“I agreed to commit myself to the project, without hesitation, even if I did not quite understand what I was getting myself into. I drew my confidence and serenity from what I had learned and lived before and elsewhere, and I also knew that I was not alone: the team was here.”
The Baobab Familial opened its doors on the 6th of July 2018. Gradually, the first activities were organised, such as the intercultural community meals, sewing, childcare centre, not forgetting the “home relaxation”, which was the front door to the Baobab Familial.
Marie-Rosaire gives her own definition of the families who are welcomed at the Baobab:
“These families do not have a lot of material goods, they happen to be separated from some of their parents, families caught up in the turmoil of having to cope, who live in isolation, who no longer have the same points of reference in their daily life. They are all vulnerable. What they need is to be welcomed.” A place of welcome like the Baobab Familial can guarantee some stability, confidence, peacefulness, tranquillity and fulfilment.
Gradually, a staff of workers joined us: they were very warm, committed, open to relationship and to mutual encounter with families. More attention was given to children, being at the heart of the parents’ preoccupation. Some activities were offered to them, aiming to help them grow in their self-confidence and to take their place in the society that received them.
I will always remember a home visit that Marie-Paule had made to a mother of the neighbourhood, who had recently arrived in Québec with her 2 children and her husband. The mother told her about her suffering, her sadness not to have a family to comfort her, cheer her up, and support her in the adaptation process she had to live. She said to Marie-Paule: “I don’t have a family here”. For me, these words are still ringing in my memory and in my heart, since they highlight the call and urgency of a body such as the Baobab.
On the occasion of this celebration called “Tribute to the Founders”, the latest have received many testimonies from the members and social workers, volunteers and partners. They also received many testimonies of appreciation, gratefulness and gratitude for this house which is a “gift”. The young people and the elderly came to express their joy.
To end this sharing, I would like to say a special thanks to the people in charge and to the social workers who have remained faithful to the original intuition and who try today to be attentive to the changing and critical needs of the families, attentive to the happiness and the future of the children of tomorrow.
Read more: www.baobabfamilial.org
Madeleine Côté, LSA