Refugee Settlement Services is a Presbyterian Support South Canterbury service. The services provided are to assist newly settled refugees to integrate into our community.
Presbyterian Support South Canterbury will provide settlement support to the refugees, linking them with community support and services, so that after 12 months of support services the refugees will have the necessary knowledge and confidence to independently access and use mainstream services.
We are pleased to welcome up to 110 Syrian refugees per year to South Canterbury over the next 2.5 years.
Refugees settling in Timaru will be from Syria.
Welcoming refugees from different countries into our community gives us the opportunity to celebrate the diversity and cultural contributions that they offer us.
Families are housed in either public or private housing, depending on availability. Refugees are assessed for public housing while they are at the Mangere Refugee Resettlement Centre.
Families will not move into the district until a suitable house has been sourced. The Refugee Settlement Services team will assist the family to connect to internet, phone and power.
If you meet a former refugee be friendly and welcoming. Imagine how you might feel if you moved somewhere new. Perhaps they need some assistance that you could help with. Some of them may still be at the beginner stage of learning English, so be patient.
We are all part of welcoming our new neighbours into this fabulous part of New Zealand that we are proud to call home.
Learn more about becoming a Refugee Support Volunteer
The New Zealand Refugee Resettlement Strategy, as approved by the New Zealand Government in 2012, is a whole-of-government approach to delivering improved refugee resettlement outcomes so that refugees more quickly achieve self-sufficiency, social integration and independence.
The overarching vision for the New Zealand Refugee Resettlement Strategy
Integration outcomes is:
Refugees are participating fully and integrated socially and economically as soon as possible so that they are living independently, undertaking the same responsibilities and exercising the same rights as other New Zealanders and have a strong sense of belonging to their own community and to New Zealand.
The overarching outcome is underpinned by five integration outcomes:
Learn more about New Zealand Refugee Resettlement Strategy.
A refugee is someone who has fled war, violence, conflict or persecution and have crossed an international border to find safety in another country. Refugees have been denied basic human rights in their country of origin and are unable to safely return home. Refugees often flee with little more than the clothes on their back, leaving behind homes, possessions, jobs and loved ones.
Refugees are defined and protected in international law. The 1951 Refugee Convention is a key legal document and defines a refugee as:
“someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.”
On arrival in New Zealand quota refugees spend their first 6 weeks at the Mangere Refugee Resettlement Centre in Auckland.
The refugee reception programme at Mangere Refugee Resettlement Centre addresses the priority areas of:
During the reception programme a Settlement Plan is developed with each quota refugee family that outlines the types of services they will be connected with to support their successful settlement in Timaru.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is the international organisation responsible for protecting refugees and seeking durable solutions for them. UNHCR decides which refugees are in the greatest need of resettlement and asks settlement countries to consider accepting them. Immigration New Zealand then makes the final decision about who will be included in the quota.
Refugee settlement areas are decided by Immigration New Zealand as well as where each refugee is settled. Their decisions are based on the capacity and available resources to receive refugees such as available housing, ethnic communities already present and local NGOs/services available.
Migrants make the decision to move based on choice. They choose to move to better their circumstances, and are able to decide where they will migrate to.
Refugees on the other hand, have no choice. They are forced to leave their homes due to fears of violence and persecution. Once they have left, they have little control over where they end up. This is instead determined by the UNHCR and refugee-accepting states.