Sussex packs hall over sponsoring Syrian refugee family

More than 100 people gathered in Sussex on Tuesday night to find out how they can help sponsor a Syrian refugee family in the town.

The Sussex meeting was the latest in a series of events being held across the province to discuss how communities and individuals can help with the settlement process of the incoming refugees.

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The Trudeau government has committed to bring 25,000 Syrian refugees into Canada by the end of 2015 and the New Brunswick government has said it expects to welcome 1,500 refugees into the province.

The Community Action for Refugees group in Sussex organized a meeting to discuss details of how the organization plans to co-sponsor at least one Syrian family in the town.

Pat McCaig, a member of Community Action for Refugees, said the meeting was intended to pass along more information to those who wanted to help.

"We just thought that if there's more people in our community that have an interest or a desire to help, or wondering what they can do ... that we wanted that information to be going out to them," McCaig said.

Organizers ran out of leaflets and had to dig out extra seating at the Tuesday evening meeting.

There was a sense of excitement among many people in the crowd as they learned about the plan, where the community would split the cost of settlement with the federal government.

People offered help in the form of money, furniture and even multicultural expertise.

Paymon Tahershamsi, who is originally from Iran, offered to help with any language issues that the family could run into when they arrive.

"Probably this family will be Arabs. We hardly have anyone here to speak Arabic, except me and another gentleman who lives in Sussex," he said.

The committee believes it may be able to welcome the family in the next two to four months, although it is awaiting the release of the detailed Syrian refugee plan from the federal government.

McCaig said the group wanted to get a sense of the community interest in helping refugee families and it's possible that more could be done to help in the future.

"We would like to sponsor a family or more if the powers are such that we are able to," she said.