The Tibetan Resettlement Project Ottawa, a volunteer-based initiative, is preparing to welcome 13 displaced Tibetans from northeastern India to Ottawa at the beginning of April.
Barred from their home country, the Tibetans have lived in exile in Arunachal Pradesh, a strip of resettlement camps at the northeastern edge of India.
In 2010, the Canadian government announced it would provide visas for 1,000 displaced Tibetans from India, following a plea by the Dalai Lama to Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2007.
The initiative is spearheaded by the Project Tibet Society, an organization established to coordinate resettlement projects for the displaced Tibetans in five cities throughout Canada.
The Tibetan Resettlement Project Ottawa plans to take 90 of the 1,000 displaced Tibetans, approximately 30 per year, until 2016.
While the government grants the Tibetans permanent residency, it is the responsibility of the project participants to pay for their settlement needs during the first year of their arrival. This means they have to raise enough funds to provide the group of Tibetans with places to live and to help them to find jobs.
The Tibetan Resettlement Project Ottawa is made up of a dozen volunteers and their assistants. They welcomed the first group of 11 Tibetans in November.
“We were able to pull together the initial support we needed to start the program, but keeping the program going is going to be a real challenge,” says co-chair Cornelius Von Baeyer. “The dilemma our 11 are facing is finding stable job opportunities.”
Von Baeyer describes the group as single, young and capable individuals who are determined to establish themselves in Ottawa. The project will also welcome the first full-size family in April.
Tsechu Lhamo was among the first group of 11 Tibetans to immigrate to Ottawa last fall. She says leaving her family behind in India was hard, but she’s happy to start a new life in Ottawa.
“The culture here is completely different from India. It’s a new learning curve,” she says. “But it was easy to adapt because the organization helped us so much by finding us jobs and places to live. I will never forget the support they have given us.