One of the most meaningful and rewarding volunteer experience I have been through was helping former refugees resettle into their new homes. This role requires a lot more commitment than other volunteer assignments; it runs for a few months until the family has more or less settled down in their new community. After filling in a form and going through a group interview, volunteers are required to go through formal training. There were 7 sessions, 6 of them were on weekday (Tuesday) evenings from 6.30pm-9pm at St James Anglican Church in Woburn, Lower Hutt. The only weekend session was about refugee culture and I was interviewed by Radio New Zealand on that day. Alas they cut away the part I spoke most confidently and kept the part I didn't answer very well haha. My 22 seconds of fame from 01:26 onwards.


Our team had four people (including both of us) supporting an elderly couple (Suleiman & Hend) from Syria. We worked with another team of five volunteers who were supporting Khaled's family of five (Khaled is Suleiman's son). Our two other team members helped with hospital visits, Work & Income appointments, English classes, housing and banking matters, sourcing second hand furniture, beds, blankets, rugs, gardening equipment, bikes, etc while Rui & I helped them with the letters, grocery shopping, showed them again how to use the ATM, how to take the bus to the Saturday market, etc. We updated each other after every visit and all of us tried to make sure things in their home and in their lives are going well.


Our wonderful team mates who did most of the hard work.


Suleiman has a strong interest in gardening so we took them to a nursery in Upper Hutt


When we saw them carrying bags of heavy groceries, Rui & I decided to source for a shopping trolley for them. I posted a notice on my company's intranet and I was so surprised I managed to get one! Rui's colleague bought a brand new one, so now they have two!


To celebrate their one year anniversary in New Zealand, the volunteers organised a picnic at Days Bay. The kids had fun with football while Khaled looked pretty happy with his catch.


Syrians are very hospitable and love making food for us. This was one of the many meals they invited us to.


With the rest of the volunteers and the lovely Al Jouja families

One afternoon, we visited our family as usual and learned that they haven't been to the market on their own lately. Monia (our volunteer coordinator) had informed us the family would like to attend World Refugee Day at Karori in the evening and they had been given all the event information including the free bus timings from Waterloo station. We were not given the bus information so we asked them what time do they have to catch the bus to Waterloo but they don't seem to know. When we drove them to Khaled's house we didn't know they were bringing so much food there and they were gonna rely on us to take them to Waterloo. They thought the bus leaves at 4pm but it turned out the bus had already left at 3.30pm. We offered to take half of them on the train and make two trips to the venue but Khaled was not in favour and said just go home. Rui crossed the train platform to ask the customer service counter but they had no idea if there would be another bus going. He was smart to call Monia for help. While waiting for her to call back, Khaled repeated to go home. I could sense their disappointment and Khaled was trying to contain his frustration as he explained he was told the bus leaves at 4pm. We looked at all the food they've prepared, the whole family managed to get this far to Waterloo and we were not going to just give up like that. Thank goodness Monia returned our SOS call and said we could take taxi to the venue and Red Cross would reimburse us. Khaled agreed and I called for a cab.

We had no idea they were selling food there. They started eating and asked us to join in but we said no mainly because I'm still not used to Arabic cuisine and secondly we didn't want to jeopardise their earnings. As we watched them get into action, serving food and collecting money, we were glad that we managed to get them here. It would be quite silly for us to hang around till the end of the event so we walked outside looking for food. Settled on an Italian place and the seafood bongusto turned out to be very good.


World Refugee Day


While they were busy with their food stall,


we went out to have a nice Italian dinner at Cosa Nostra.


Judges went round tasting the food prepared by the participants. Aisha explaining the food prepared by her family.

They had sold almost everything by the time we got back. Had to stay on till Monia could leave so she could give them a ride back and we took the rest. Hamida (Khaled's daughter) was upset she couldn't go to grandparents house even though she won his brother in a few rounds of scissors paper stone. I can imagine it must be fun staying over with their grandparents over the weekend, away from the eyes of your parents meant freedom to do more things. As Khaled & Aisha got onto Monia's car, they turned around and said to me, full of gratitude: Thank you Mei. That was by far the most heartfelt and appreciative thank you I have ever received in my life. After dropping them off, we offered to make a trip back to Khaled's house just to take Hamida and when I saw her brother waiting at the door and running to his sister, I know they do enjoy each other's company despite the many sibling fights they have. Despite a very long day, it was definitely very rewarding when we saw that everyone was happy at the end of the day.