Private Sponsorship

At Our Gate  •  Part One: Private Sponsorship

What begins as a short email can become months of preparation, years of waiting and a promise to remain present.

By El Behnia (she/her), Director of 2SLGBTQ+ Refugee Services

People often ask what I actually do as Director of 2SLGBTQ+ Refugee Services at MCC Toronto.

My work has four main parts. First, I help privately sponsored refugees hoping to come to Canada. Through our partnership with Rainbow Railroad, I prepare Government-Assisted Refugee cases. For refugee claimants already here, I provide support as they look for housing, health care, legal assistance and community. I am also rebuilding our newcomer programming through smaller, language-specific workshops.

Alongside all of this, I am strengthening how Refugee Services keeps records, understands its impact and remains accountable. We should always be able to explain what was promised, what support was provided and whether it made a difference. We should also be able to tell the story of this work without exposing the private stories people have entrusted to us.

Over the next few issues of At Our Gate, I want to show you what each part of that work looks like through the stories of newcomers who are imagined, but whose experiences are not.

Let us begin with private sponsorship.

A short email, and a much larger hope

Call them Andriy and Maksym, a Ukrainian couple living temporarily in Hungary. They are away from the war, but they do not feel that they have arrived anywhere. Their lives remain uncertain, and most of what they own still fits into two suitcases.

One evening, they hear that a church in Toronto works with LGBTQ+ refugees. They write a short email.

When that email reaches me, I know their hope is much larger than the few sentences on my screen.

But hope alone cannot build a sponsorship. The first thing I need to find is a group of people willing to stand beside them.

Building a sponsorship team

Sometimes potential sponsors already know one another and come to MCC Toronto as a complete group: friends, members of a community, or people who have helped sponsor refugees before. Sometimes they are relatives of the people waiting overseas, who have spent years worrying and are prepared to do almost anything to bring their loved ones to safety. Other groups begin with one or two committed people who slowly gather others.

Every group is different. Some sponsors already understand fundraising. They have strong networks and supportive families, and they know how to organize a campaign, speak about the need and gather the required funds. Others have the commitment but not yet the resources, and they need time, guidance and help thinking about how they will reach their goal.

That is where our conversations begin.

We talk honestly about money. Not because money is the most important part of sponsorship, but because a promise without the resources to keep it can leave a newcomer in a very difficult position. We think about rent, food, transportation, clothing and all the ordinary costs of beginning a life in Toronto. We consider what Andriy and Maksym may need during their first year, and how the group will make sure those needs are met.

Then we talk about everything money cannot provide.

A strong sponsorship team needs more than generous donors. It needs people who are willing to remain present.

Turning a life into an application

Once the team and the funding are coming together, we begin the long work of preparing the application. This is often where sponsors discover just how much happens behind the scenes.

Andriy and Maksym must tell the story of their lives: where they have lived, what they have experienced, why they left and why they cannot safely return. Putting that story together can be painful. Imagine being asked to take some of the most frightening moments of your life and turn them into neat paragraphs. Imagine having to remember dates from a time when survival mattered more than keeping a calendar.

My job is to help them tell that story truthfully, clearly and with dignity. The narrative must sound like them. It must never become something written about them without them.

Then there are the forms. Many, many government forms. Some questions seem to appear more than once. Others ask for details from many years ago. Every date, name and address must be checked carefully, and each form must agree with the next and with the documents that support it.

The sponsors help collect information. Andriy and Maksym search for old records. Questions travel back and forth between Hungary and Toronto. There are corrections, more questions and new versions.

Eventually, everything is ready. I upload the forms and supporting documents one by one, checking that the signatures are there, that the right pages have been included and that nothing important has been left behind.

Then comes the moment when the application is finally submitted.

It may look like the click of a button. Behind that click are months of conversations, fundraising, storytelling, document gathering and careful review, along with sponsors who have chosen to take responsibility for people they may never have met in person.

And then everyone waits

The sponsors wait in Toronto. Andriy and Maksym wait in Hungary. I wait with them.

This part can last far longer than anyone hoped.

But the best sponsors do not disappear once the application is in. The relationship continues. Sponsors ask how the people they are supporting are doing, remember birthdays and check whether the living situation has changed. Fundraising and preparation continue for an arrival date no one can predict.

When a case is delayed, some write to their Members of Parliament, asking for updates, raising urgent concerns and reminding decision-makers that a real person is waiting behind an application number. Others find creative ways to help from a distance, connecting the person they are sponsoring with community, information or emotional support. They continue showing up even when there is no news to share.

MCC Toronto has been incredibly fortunate to work with some truly extraordinary sponsors. I have watched them advocate, organize, fundraise and refuse to let someone feel forgotten through years of waiting. I have watched a group formed to complete an application become a community preparing to welcome someone home.

I could not be more grateful for them.

Their commitment reminds me that sponsorship is not about rescuing anyone. It is about standing beside them.

When approval finally comes

Let us imagine that one morning, after a very long wait, Andriy checks his phone. There is a message. Their application has been approved.

For a few moments, neither Andriy nor Maksym knows what to say. The future they were afraid to imagine has suddenly become real.

In Toronto, the sponsorship group gets to work. Housing is confirmed. Arrival plans are made. Groceries are purchased. Someone checks the weather and realizes the couple will need warmer clothing.

Then the day finally arrives. Andriy and Maksym walk through the airport doors carrying the same two suitcases they have carried through years of uncertainty. Waiting on the other side is a group of people who once knew them only through an email, holding up a sign with their names.

For the first time, they meet.

The airport is only the beginning

The sponsorship is not finished. Over the next year, Andriy and Maksym will learn how to navigate a new city and build an independent life. They will have joyful days and difficult ones. They will make decisions and make mistakes, find community, and slowly begin to imagine a future that is not shaped entirely by fear.

Their sponsors will walk beside them until they are ready to walk forward on their own.

That is private sponsorship

Private sponsorship begins when someone asks, “Can you help us?” It becomes possible when a group of people answers, “We are willing to try.” The work continues through fundraising, forms, long periods of silence, advocacy and preparation. At its very best, it becomes a relationship built across borders long before the airport doors finally open.