Ukrainian refugee students displaced by war receive warm welcome at Toronto Catholic school | 24CA News

In the hallways of St. Demetrius Catholic School in Etobicoke, there’s a flurry of exercise as Ms. Farrugia’s first-grade class has simply been set free for the day. The six- and seven-year-olds are placing on their snowsuits and on the point of head house. Parents are ready eagerly exterior, largely moms. The youngsters’s fathers are again house in Ukraine.

The college students of the Toronto college are all of Ukrainian descent. Nearly half of them arrived within the final 12 months.

“February 24th hit. About two weeks later, we started to receive students,” recalled Lily Hordienko, the college’s principal.

“Then they started coming in droves … and they’re still coming.”

On the day Global News visited the college, three extra college students from Ukraine had been registered for lessons.

“We realized we needed more classrooms, more space, more teachers … we had more portables put in,” mentioned Hordienko.

The college now has a complete of six portables exterior the constructing to accommodate the rising wants.

The partitions of the college are painted in brilliant colors, however most blatant are the blue and yellow marking Ukraine’s nationwide flag.

As the kids collect their belongings, some are talking in English, however most are chatting of their native Ukrainian.

“When they arrive, they hear Ukrainian, they pray in Ukrainian, we sing the anthem for both Canada and Ukraine and so they at least feel that they’re home, they’re amongst their own people,” mentioned Hordienko.

Now principal of the college, Hordienko attended as a baby after which despatched her personal youngsters.

“It’s a community that keeps us all coming back. It covers from little ones to older ones,” she mentioned.

St. Demetrius Catholic School is an Eastern Rite college throughout the Toronto Catholic District School Board that has been in existence for 45 years.

It is situated in what has turn out to be a hub for the Ukrainian group in Ontario. The college is nestled between a Ukrainian seniors’ residence and a Ukrainian church, St. Demetrius the Great Martyr Parish. There can be a Ukrainian credit score union serving the close by senior inhabitants.

A real group in each sense of the phrase, which is exactly what the newcomers want once they arrive, defined the church’s affiliate pastor, Father Bohdan Swystun.

“A few weeks after the invasion began, people started to arrive in Canada,” mentioned Swystun. “As people were filling out visas, we’d have calls from Poland or Germany and other countries saying, ‘Is there places to stay around your church? Because we’ve heard about your church, we heard about your school.’”

Swystun mentioned his personal dad and mom got here to Canada as refugees after the Second World War so there’s a deep sense of understanding amongst parishioners.

“A lot of our parishioners came escaping poverty … so we all know what it’s like to be resettled, what it is to not have all the things that everybody else has. So everybody in the community has gone through that at some point or somebody in their family has. So when someone in need appears at our doorstep, we all roll up our sleeves and make them welcome,” he mentioned.

Some of the older Ukrainian refugee college students from St. Demetrius be a part of the seniors on the church for pierogi-making periods.

“These ladies remind them of their grandmas so they sit beside these ladies, most of them already know how to make pierogies, they sit, they bond, they share stories. So it’s this intergenerational support as well,” added Swystun.

With the help of the college, the church and the group, the refugee households obtain reward playing cards and weekly deliveries of groceries.

The college’s library has additionally been remodeled into an area the place households can go to to entry free dried meals, contemporary bread and heat youngsters’s garments, ought to they want them.

Hordienko calls it a “holistic approach” to serving to the refugees really feel welcome.

“Almost everybody has family back in Ukraine so we were living and breathing it with our newcomers,” she mentioned.

In one of many portables, trainer Lisa Perri prepares her Grade 8 class for a challenge they’ll embark on for Black History Month.

She slowly articulates the target and begins to ask the scholars questions.

The youngsters seem shy at first however then a number of of them elevate their palms.

Some of them use Google Translate on their computer systems as a result of language stays a problem.

“There’s a lot of students that did come with no English … on their computers, they can use a translation app and that kind of helps them to get comfortable and it helps us to communicate with us when we’re having a difficult time getting what we want to say across,” mentioned Perri.

Teaching is just one a part of Perri’s job.

“A lot of these students have come with very little or nothing. They’ve escaped a hardship that’s even difficult for us to imagine,” she mentioned. “They’re coming with oftentimes only one parent, perhaps no parents and a sponsor. They’re coming with limited resources. So it’s been difficult for us to try and make sure that not only are they set up academically, but especially emotionally.”

“They’re looking after the mental health for these kids. Did they have a lunch? Do they have a snack? … The staff has been unbelievable,” mentioned Hordienko.

The bell rings. It’s Friday afternoon. The college students are heading house for the weekend. Some of the little ones cease to hug Hordienko on their means out. She speaks to them in Ukrainian they usually smile.

“Nothing is traditional about what has been going on here this last year,” she mentioned.