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Reaching out to immigrant women

How the Howe Sound Women’s Centre is helping the corridor’s newcomers
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From a Crossroad in Kiev Oksana Danylchenko left the Ukraine to be with her Canadian boyfriend. The Home Sound Women's Centre supports her and other immigrant women in transition.

Oksana Danylchenko pensively brings her index finger to her chin, the smell of blueberry muffins sweetening the air around her. In front of her, on a big, black glass-top table in a backroom of the Howe Sound Women’s Centre in Squamish, is a personal essay she wrote as part of the ESL curriculum built into the Multicultural Outreach Services (MOS) program started about two and a half years ago.

Teacher Nicole Moore is looking over her writing, talking about root words, about prefixes and suffixes. Today, Moore also grades the work of two other immigrant women: Irina Gracheva, from Russia, and Maggie Lee, from South Korea.

Funded by the province and proceeds from Pearl’s 2nds, MOS offers a variety of services, from translation to transitional housing, educational advice to the procurement of clothes and furniture needed to start life in a foreign land. Further, there’s also help for children who have borne witness to violence. Although there are no refugees currently in the program, it’s there for them should some arrive.

This ESL component has Moore coming in every second week. Attendance can range from these three women to a dozen more.

“I think it’s been needed for quite a while,” says Jaz Giri, who heads up the program. “We didn’t have anything like that in our community. It serves as a support system for immigrant families, or women, in this case.”

For the past two years, Lee has been living in Squamish with her husband and two children, who attend local schools. The month of September could be a milestone as far as her life in Canada goes: She’s expecting her visa, which has been two years coming.

“I have to run my own business,” she says over coffee in Squamish. “It takes a long time to solve problems. A lot of problems. I applied for a work permit. I applied in May, and I can’t get it. I have no problems with my passport, my situation.”

But bureaucratic wheels turn to their own rhythms.

Gracheva, who has been in Canada since July, has encountered a different set of difficulties. She holds two degrees from Russia, one in mathematics and one in managerial studies. She’d like to be an accountant, but knows she’ll need auxiliary education to meet Canadian standards. Still, she’s happy to be in Canada, thinks highly of the country’s social services and is enthusiastic about her children leveraging new opportunities.

“With my husband, we think it’s a better place for our children, better colleges and more opportunities,” she says.

So far, she’s had one job offer. Before deciding, she’s waiting to hear back from another potential employer.

Of the three women, Danylchenko’s story is perhaps the most romantic. Born in the Ukraine, working until very recently as a molecular biologist in Kiev, she met a Canadian man in her homeland, crushed hard for him and dropped everything to move to Whistler.

“I had a car, and I did everything I wanted to do,” she says of her life in Kiev. “I left everything behind. He’s worth everything I left.”

That these three women are able to come together in the Women’s Centre, to bring their divergent pasts to a mutual present, is part of the MOS program’s support mandate. It offers something the greater community can’t necessarily manage. In Lee’s case, she’s aware of a dozen or so Korean families, and they’re available to her for support. But the Women’s Centre goes that extra distance.

“It’s awesome,” says Giri. “In the first year, we didn’t have that good a participation, but, this year, nine women showed up. They receive income assistance if they need support with that — just everything that’s needed to make the transition from one period of their life to another. So we work with other agencies, connect the women with other agencies.”

For her part, Lee has benefited greatly from MOS, although she’d like to see an ESL program that allows for the inclusion of men, which, incidentally, is something Giri is working towards with Quest University.

As Lee’s language skills progress, she sees herself opening a restaurant. However, she needs a greater degree of emersion. MOS offers its services every Wednesday, with Moore participating every second week. More funding is needed for a greater ESL component.

“I want to learn to speak English,” says Lee, who can practice her English even if Moore isn’t actually in attendance. “Many times. But just once a week, it’s a short time. There aren’t many classes in Squamish.”

Ask her if she finds that frustrating, and she’ll touch her forehead in mock horror.

“I don’t speak English well, so I can’t get together with Canadian people. I can’t speak about my life.”

The immigrant experience in Canada is varied, much of it depending on the amenities of a given location. In Toronto, which is often considered the home of Canadian multiculturalism, there is a vast support infrastructure, from the comfort of an ethnic enclave to the utility of an educational outlet. According to Statistics Canada, there are 3,140 immigrants in Squamish, 1,455 in Whistler and 360 in Pemberton. MOS seeks to service them all.

“More exposure to the program would help,” says Giri.