Two refugee families from Syria have been calling High River home for the last month.

Ken Braat is the chair of the committee with the St. Francis de Sales church and St. Andrews Parish which brought the families to the town.

He says in late September they were informed they'd been chosen to help and he got a call on December 18, where he was told he needed to find two homes.

"We have some wonderful landlords in town when they heard what was going on, the places were available and ready, we had leases signed on the 22nd (of December) and had utilities hooked up. We were told we'd be expecting the families in early January and they arrived on December 27," he says.

Braat says one family includes a mom, dad and their three-year-old daughter while the other includes a mother, father, their 9-month old son and the mom's sister and mother.
He says the adults have all received social insurance numbers and are ready, eager and willing to work.

""You look at the background, Mattel has been a seamstress since she was 12 years old and the skill set there is amazing, Yamen, he's shown me pictures of his family farm but he moved to Damascus because he was a graphic designer and some of the campaigns he did are just incredible," He showed me one campaign that he worked on for the Damascus Auto Show, it's just an amazing skill set (they have)," he says. "Maria is a licensed French language translator and she's volunteering right now at Holy Spirit Academy and as time goes by I'm hoping that things are going to get so much better for these families."
 
It has been a pleasure to work with so many people who care, and these families," Braat says. "Everyone has been pleasantly working to make their resettlement, and their moving into our community that mush less stressful than what it could possibly be."

He says it takes about $25,000 to help bring each family over and a lot of the fundraising has been done through their Parish. The families, he says, comes from an area around Damascus  where there were Sunni and Shiite Muslims, Catholics and all others living together in harmony until the conflict destroyed it and sent these and other families and individuals fleeing to other countries.

Braat says the High River Ministerial raises funds each year with the community Christmas carol concert and this year they turned over a $1,000 to the resettlement fund. He says they're more than happy to accept donations from other groups willing to help out especially with the potential for a third family to come soon.

"Times are tough, there's no denying it and the economy is what it is but just given all those things I'm grateful that we're here and things are getting better, let's share it with them," he says.