Peterborough Man Leaving To Visit Refugee Camp In Jordan, Writes Eloquent Facebook Post

Peterborough community ambassador Michael VanDerHerberg—who works at the New Canadians Centre and co-owns Silver Bean Café with his wife Andrea—is about to embark on the journey of a lifetime. He leaves for Jordan, an Arab nation on the east bank of the Jordan River, on Sunday (December 27th).

Jordan, which borders Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Palestine, is now home to more than one million Syrian refugees fleeing their war torn country. VanDerHerberg wants to view firsthand a refugee camp there: the living conditions, meet some of the families, see what can be done as the world deals with these deepening crisis.

VanHerHerberg pictured with one of his two children.

VanDerHerberg, who plans to post dispatches and photos from Jordan on social media, wrote an eloquent Facebook post about what this journey means to him—and how he thinks he has found his calling sotospeak. Here is an excerpt below...

Image via Unhcr.org

"I'll be staying with a friend, Faris Khoury, and he'll be my guide while in the great Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. I intend to visit a refugee camp while I am there, connecting with a UNHCR office, and working through some other connections to refugee-serving organizations in Amman, the capital city.

I have been involved in the refugee industry for about ten years now, and what began as a keen interest has now turned into a career of sorts with the New Canadians Centre (NCC) here in Peterborough. Andrea's [his wife] grandfather, who did the administrative work to sponsor 600+ refugees from around the world to come to Canada, taught me how to do this work before he passed a few years ago.

I began attending conferences and consultations with the Canadian Council for Refugees / Conseil canadien pour les réfugiés (CCR) and learned much more about what the work they and hundreds of other organizations across the country were doing to facilitate more and better private and government sponsorships, inland protection for refugee claimants, and overseas protection for those still in camps. They do incredible work. I encourage you to check out http://ccrweb.ca/ to learn more if you are interested.

I was then hired at the NCC as an Employment Counsellor and I worked my way into the role of Employment Services Coordinator over the years. While I still attended CCR conferences, served refugees through my role at NCC, and was involved in various local sponsorships, my involvement in private sponsorships became less and less leading into 2015.

Image via Unhcr.org

After a year parental leave, a season at the Silver Bean, and with a keen interest in consulting work, I took a position with Jonathan Bennett at Laridae Communications in March of this year serving the non-profit sector with strategy, projects, and business systems. Very engaging work. Great employer.

In late September, I received an email from a Sponsorship Agreement Holder, the larger organization through which I would have submitted private sponsorship applications, that a family whose application we submitted in 2010 was being called in for an interview. The only catch was that we had to submit all of the paperwork over again. All of it. This equates to about 40 pages per person and a family of four. 160. And, we thought their chances of acceptance were low because of some circumstances. To cut to the quick, we did it, they had the interview, and they were accepted. Hallelujah.

It floored me to realize that I was feeling pulled back into the refugee work and quickly. While working at Laridae, I started volunteering with Tamara offering workshops, attending forums, and jumping back in, head first, into the refugee world. I'm not sure if any of you ever feel 'calling', or vocation. I mentioned to Andrea weeks into this that I was feeling pulled back into this work. If you allow me to be a bit foolish and spiritual for a second, I have learned not to resist these feelings.

How does a young man, with all the privilege in the world, come to feel drawn to working with refugees? Yes, it is a desire to serve in a way that I feel that I can be effective; I won't deny it. It has also been born out of relationship, connections with real people, discovering that who we didn't previously know is often just like us with the same hopes and dreams. I may be nobody to you, and that's fine, but if you fear the other, then I would encourage you to make room, with a thousand steps, to receiving others into your life. For this I thank the TISA - Trent International Students' Association, the Trent International Program, the NCC, the local chapter of WUSC, the Rotary clubs here in Peterborough, the thousands of tourists I have met at our cafe, to those that we've hosted for dinner, to those that we have hosted in our home, and to those that have hosted me in their home on the other side of the world.

So, I'm back at the NCC. Laridae was very gracious to give me up for a bit, understanding that I was becoming much too distracted in it all to actually do both. And I've been hired, alongside Tamara Hoogerdyk, to be a Refugee Resettlement Coordinator, working with sponsoring groups that are assisting privately sponsored refugees as well as building good systems to possibly receive government assisted refugees in Peterborough.

If you're the praying sort, please do pray for me while I travel and while I'm there. Godspeed, as it were."

Engage with us on social media on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Write to us at tips@ptbocanada.com.