Guelph’s Syrian refugee effort has a sudden shortage of beds, mattresses and other bedroom furniture. There was an expectation of a surplus.
Jaya James, volunteer coordinator with Guelph’s Refugee Sponsorship Forum, said the local effort to bring 76 refugee families to the city was offered some 220 suites of bedroom furniture from a Hamilton area hotel that was slated to be demolished.
The demolition company carrying out the work made the offer, but has since withdrawn it for undisclosed reasons.
“We don’t know why, but we just had confirmation last week that for some reason they are not able to do the donation,” she said. “We understand. These things happen. But it means that, throughout this time we’ve been saying to everybody that we don’t need any bedroom furniture, that we’re good for bedroom furniture.”
Most of the suites had two beds, bedside tables and dressers.
“We were thinking we would probably have a bit of a surplus,” she added. “Now, we’ve gone from a surplus situation to having very little bedroom furniture. We need to get donations of dressers, beds, and new mattresses. We want to have new mattresses at all the homes.”
She added that a local charity will likely confirm this week that it will donate about 73 new mattresses. More will be needed, along with bedframes and the other bedroom items.
Donations are now welcome. Visit the forum online at www.guelphrefugeeforum.com and click on the “donate now” tab at the top of the page.
Items can also be dropped off at Salvation Army Community and Family Services at 210 Victoria Road S., Tuesday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
“And we were realizing that it would be really good to have some solid bunk beds, because a lot of these families have little kids,” she said. “They may not have a lot of bedrooms in their homes, so they might need to have two kids in a bedroom. Bunk beds make the most efficient use of space.”
Syrian refugees destined for Guelph have begun to arrive here, and some have landed in Montreal and Toronto, arriving in Guelph sometime this week.
The composition of all 76 families is not yet know, but it is known that 49 of those families have a total of 220 members – 134 adults, 20 teenagers, 37 school-aged children, and 29 children under the age of four.
“We are trying to collect enough of all those bedroom items to outfit 76 families for a family of four, recognizing that the families are a big larger, on average, than a family of four,” Jaya James added. “Right now I have virtually no beds.”
The effort hopes to collect new, good quality mattresses, and may have to purchase them if there is a need to do so.
“So if there are companies willing to give a discount if we buy in bulk, or assist us with that, we would definitely be interested in hearing from them,” she added.
