Furnished with love: Local women help refugees build a home

For two Beacon Hill residents this expression couldn’t ring truer. That’s because Nathalie Maione and Buffey Cassidy spend hours of their time each week helping refugee claimants furnish their homes using items other people often leave in the trash.

“Basically, what we do is we come in and we're kind of like the welcoming wagon except with furniture. We come in and we say ‘Welcome to Canada! Here's your furniture and you're all set,’" says Maione.

It all started when the pair began volunteering for their church’s outreach program. At the time, one of the leaders was working for the Catholic Immigration Centre’s Reception House and explained that many refugees come to Canada with virtually nothing. As a result, Maione and Cassidy, who both own home-based daycares, decided they would help by using Maione’s 15-seater van to collect furniture left in the garbage.

“Buffey and I did a family by ourselves and from then on it just started growing,” says Maione. “Once we did it once we were just hooked.”

Eventually, the pair rented a moving truck and started collecting furniture every Wednesday evening through word of mouth, then dropping off items to refugees provided by the Catholic Immigration Centre.

Today, Cassidy and Maione have given their volunteer group the name Helping With Furniture and have successfully helped more than 75 families – many of which are single moms – furnish their homes.

Maione explains the refugees come from a variety of countries, such as Congo, Rwanda, Colombia and Haiti, and often have little support from government or religious agencies. The result: refugees are often penniless and have nobody to turn to.

“They used to stay about three months at the Reception House, just to get their bearings,” says Maione. “Now it's been cut down to three or four weeks, so often they just start to find their bearings and they move to a totally different location where they have to re-do it again, which is hard enough when you have the culture shock, the weather shock and everything else.”

And although these women often pull all-nighters to help pick up and drop off furniture, for these dedicated volunteers, it is all worth it. Maione says one of the reasons why she does it is because she can relate to these new Canadians, who just like her, were displaced from their home countries. Maione says she vividly remembers arriving from France at the tender age of 11.

“I didn't want to leave my friends, my family, so I think to me, it kind of brings back that feeling of loneliness that I had when I was a child,” says the 45-year-old. “I know not half as much as what they are going through, but I can feel a little bit of their pain. And it means that I can alleviate a little bit of that and show that, you know what, there's somebody who cares for you here as well and to give them a boost.”

For Cassidy, 38, volunteering countless hours has allowed her to give back to the community and find meaning in her life.

“I think we've all been placed on this earth to do something,” she says. “Once I started doing this with Nathalie, it seemed to be, that's it, this is my niche. It's really hard to explain how, even though physically you're tired at the end of the night, you're adrenaline is running so much because meeting these new families from all different background situations, often coming from just awful, horrific situations and to see them determined to make a go in Canada. They're not carrying on this pity party – it really gives you a kick in the behind.”

And they are not the only ones who feel this way. The twosome says they’ve had an incredible amount of community support over the last year and a half and have already completely filled their storage area located near the Canada Museum of Science and Technology. However, with more and more furniture arriving every week, it also means they need extra volunteers.

“We've been very fortunate with the donator side,” says Cassidy. “Where we're trying to grow, so that we'll be able to balance, is we need to get some more volunteers. We do have wonderful volunteers, but we need more.”

For more information, visit www.helpingwithfurniture.com.