Website connects Winnipeggers who need work done, refugees who’ll do it
Advertisement
Read this article for free:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Monthly Digital Subscription
$0 for the first 4 weeks*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*No charge for 4 weeks then price increases to the regular rate of $19.00 plus GST every four weeks. Offer available to new and qualified returning subscribers only. Cancel any time.
Monthly Digital Subscription
$4.75/week*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*Billed as $19 plus GST every four weeks. Cancel any time.
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Add Free Press access to your Brandon Sun subscription for only an additional
$1 for the first 4 weeks*
*Your next subscription payment will increase by $1.00 and you will be charged $16.99 plus GST for four weeks. After four weeks, your payment will increase to $23.99 plus GST every four weeks.
Read unlimited articles for free today:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/03/2017 (3171 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Takes one to know one.
And that’s why Winnipeg painting contractor Omar Rahimi wants to help Syrian refugees who’ve recently landed here.
Rahimi and his partner, consultant Bob Axworthy, have launched a website where people looking to hire a handyman for odd jobs around the house can be matched up by newcomers willing to do that work.
Rahimi is an immigrant who moved with his family from a refugee camp in Iraq as a teenager. He donates time to help newcomers gain a footing in the community, including coaching in an immigrant and refugee soccer league. Lately, with a wave of asylum seekers walking over the border from the United States into Emerson, he’s been collecting clothes donations to help them through their first winter.
“My family came here in 2001,” he said. “Before we came to Canada, we lived in the Al Trash refugee camp in the desert of western Iraq. I now have meaningful employment and I want to help others.”
Axworthy is the brother of the former MP and University of Winnipeg president Lloyd Axworthy.
The pair teamed up over their love of organizing community sports.
Axworthy said the goal of www.hirearefugee.ca is to connect people who need work done with people who need to work.
Most of the work falls under the handyman category, which includes interior and exterior painting, shovelling snow and the like. Rahimi said he has a regular crew of 20 workers but has a pool of 120 mostly Syrian refugees he can draw on.
They’re eager to contribute, but are still getting used to life in Canada, he said.
“We’re going to run it like a business, but anything over and above the cost of running it, those funds will be directed back into the refugee community for whatever they need,” Axworthy said.
That could include anything, including rent and groceries, he said, describing the primary purpose of the effort as a social enterprise.
alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca