Simcoe resource center serves farm workers, international students

One of Canada’s leading settlement services agencies has set up shop in Simcoe.

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The Catholic Community Services of York Region (CCSYR) opened the first satellite office in the organization’s 43-year history in Norfolk County in January — a response, says executive director Leonilda Patey, to a growing need from newcomers to the region.

Norfolk welcomes some 6,000 migrant farm workers from Mexico and the Caribbean each year, and Fanshawe College’s Simcoe campus has a healthy contingent of international students.

Add in refugees and immigrants landing in the rural county, and CCSYR decided to rent office space on Queensway West to offer in-person and online counseling and settlement services.

“Understanding the need out here, it was important to make the investment,” Patey said during a recent visit to the office, where clients can do online research, attend seminars on health, labor rights and financial literacy, and take English classes.

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“We have people from Afghanistan, Thailand, Mexico who are learning to speak English,” said Leanne Arnal, a settlement navigator who runs the office as its sole permanent employee.

The office offers English classes for farm workers from Mexico, and Arnal is organizing a course in conversational Spanish for farmers and human resources managers “so they can better communicate with their workers.”

CCSYR is not the only agency in Norfolk helping farm workers navigate the legal and health-care systems, but Arnal said there is enough demand from newcomers to warrant numerous organizations being active.

“I think to service the amount of people we have here, absolutely, there’s a need,” she said.

The CCSYR office is open Monday and Tuesday from 10 am to 5 pm, and Wednesday to Friday from 10 am to 9 pm, with two conversational English classes each evening.

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Officially, Arnal estimates the office serves close to 100 people each week, but the longtime migrant worker advocate says she fields calls and WhatsApp messages at all hours of the day.

“I operate morning to night, six or seven days a week,” she said. “There’s always people who need something.”

The calls can be as simple as finding a new coat for a worker or arranging a ride into town. Sometimes, Arnal is called upon to mediate disputes between workers and farmers or advise workers experiencing mistreatment or abuse.

Patey credited Arnal for forging relationships with farmers and farm workers alike.

“It’s that connection piece that makes this work. Because you can’t have one without the other,” Patey said.

Helping students

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The satellite office is a destination for international students, many of whom land in Canada with little knowledge of their new home.

Adrian Lopez was at a loss when he got to Simcoe early last year to study social service work at Fanshawe.

Lacking transportation, he spent hours walking around town to buy groceries.

After months of fruitlessly searching for an apartment, the Mexican student found a bed in a house with 10 roommates from India.

“I have had many problems with them. We are from different cultures,” said Lopez, who feels hamstrung by the high cost of rent and paucity of vacant units.

“So I had to get used to the place,” he said.

Watching some of his classmates break down under the strain of living away from home underscored the need for more mental-health counseling for international students.

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“Some people have good resilience, but not all of them,” Lopez said. “Some people, after two or three months, they are crying. They miss family, they miss friends. Things happen around them and they don’t know what to do.”

Lopez was a physiotherapist in Mexico before leaving for Canada “to find some opportunities” at better-paying work and to learn English. He came to the CCSYR office to help find a job and ended up getting hired by the agency as a co-op student in May.

International students are capped at working 20 hours a week, which makes getting hired a challenge, Lopez explained.

“As international students, we sometimes need support to find a job,” he said. “Because when we come here, we don’t know how to do it.”

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Lopez has made inroads with the men and women from Mexico working on area farms, helping one worker enrol in Spanish-language mental-health counseling offered by CCSYR.

Making an impact

Six months into a year-long pilot project, Arnal said the number of people using the CCSYR satellite office is “supportive of the fact that we need to keep doing this every day.”

“And then we also need to be able to demonstrate the impact we’re having in the community,” Patey said.

“So it’s not just the numbers. It’s how successful are people as a result of the interaction.”

To learn more about the services offered at CCSYR’s Simcoe office, call 519-277-1102 or 1-800-263-2075 or email [email protected].

JP Antonacci is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter with the Hamilton Spectator. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.

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