Help Dartmouth-area Syrian Refugees

We are a group of friends in the Dartmouth area hoping to help our new neighbors, four large  Syrian refugee families, by helping to furnish their new homes and providing them with warm clothing. We urgently need your help to make this happen!

Just over two weeks ago, these families moved from hotels into permanent housing in North End Dartmouth. As government-sponsored refugees, they receive some limited financial support, but not much beyond basic living expenses to cover rent and food.  This means that many of them are living in small, bare apartments, with mattresses on the floor doing triple duty as bed, sofa, and dinner table. It also means that many of them are going to school in the same clothes every day, with sandals on their feet in February.
Their needs are vast, and they are URGENT.

So far we have helped furnish a home for one family, but we need financial support to help the next three families.

Here's where you come in:
We are asking for your financial support in order to purchase household necessities including furniture, food, clothing, and toiletries. 
We have already used some donated funds to purchase a clothes washer for one family, and next we would like to purchase several sets of bunk beds as many of the children are currently sharing twin mattresses and sleeping 4+ people to a room.

To put this in context, imagine what it was like furnishing your first apartment... and then picture doing that with no resources, 6-10 children, in a foreign country, in a foreign language, and after having been forced to flee your homeland.  We would like to do everything we can to help make things easier for them.

Through generous donations of clothing, furniture, and other supplies, we have so far furnished a whole home for a family of 8, and our goal is to help at least three more families with a total of 30 children. Their children range in age from very young to late teens, including two with special needs.  We were told by the families that they have visited local donation centres, but that there was very little left by the time they arrived. Our donations for the first family were very well received, and we look forward to helping the others as much as possible. All financial donations are welcome, as are donations of furniture, clothing, and household necessities, so please get in touch if you would like to make a non-financial donation.

This effort has been spearheaded by several parents whose children go to school with the newcomer families that we will be helping, and a member of our group is Arabic-speaking which has allowed us to connect more personally with each family and meet their specific needs.

All financial donations will be used to directly support these four government-sponsored refugee families in the Dartmouth area. If you would like your donation to be used for a specific purpose (ie: warm boots, a bed, food, etc), please do not hesitate to contact us and we would be happy to help find a way to make this happen.