Calling all Green Thumbs

Do you love plants? Do you have half an hour to spare once a month? Join our plant care team to water and tidy the lush foliage gracing the Great Hall. We are looking for 2 to 3 volunteers who are free once a month after service to care for the plants. We receive many compliments on the plants warming our space, but they do need to be maintained.

Contact Rev. Fiona if you are interested.

FESTIVE FAIR WRAP UP 

Thanks to all our amazing volunteers we have had another successful Festive Fair!  It has been such a pleasure working with all of you who so willingly devoted your time and effort working on our fair. It was a fantastic UU team effort!  

This summer I am looking for volunteers to help out with our first ever Art in the Garden show sometime in July. More details to come.

Candice Rice
Chair, Festive Fair Planning Committee

New Refugee Sponsorship by UCM

Call for More Volunteers
A new committee has been formed to sponsor a refugee family, after we heard about a fully-funded subsidy program called Refugee Hub in Ottawa. We are able to sponsor a refugee family without the need for fundraising, and eight committee members have joined so far, ready to use the experience we gained from sponsoring the Khusruf family in 2016. Five of the committee members are UCM members, and Sally Rylett, daughter of Cathy Tafler and Doug Rylett, has volunteered to chair the committee. We had sixteen members of the refugee committee in 2016, so we would love to have more volunteers to help in 2018.

Duties could include helping with the following:
- setting up bank accounts and bus passes
- finding an Arabic-speaking doctor and dentist
- finding an apartment or townhouse
- shopping for winter clothes, new and used
- setting up the Ontario driver's licence test
- enrolling the family in ESL courses and PDSB school registration
- creating resume(s) and searching for a job
- getting used or new furniture, etc.

The family we have applied for (not yet confirmed) is a relatively older Syrian family with three adult children (19, 25 and 29 years old, two females and a male), and an 8 year old daughter in grade two, and mom and dad. They have been stationed in Amman since fleeing their Syrian homeland, with no chance of settling in Jordan.

The committee includes two Toronto-based friends of UCM committee members, so we are calling the new committee "West-end Unitarians and Friends".  All families in this fully-funded BVOR (Blended Visa-Office Referred) program are pre-approved by the federal government, so our family may arrive in 6-8 weeks, before year-end. If you are interested in helping this new family to settle in Mississauga, please contact Sally Rylett at sally.rylett@gmail.com or call at 647-233-7177.

There is no better feeling than supporting a newly arrived refugee family to thrive here in Canada!

Please join us.

Social Responsibility Committee

Are you looking for a volunteer opportunity at UCM? The Social Responsibility Committee needs someone to take on the organization of our food bank collections. Duties would involve promoting our Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter campaigns in The Shining Chalice and overseeing the collections. You would also liaise with the Mississauga Food Bank and deliver the donations. Guidance will be provided!

If interested please speak to Judy Benger.