Refugee Support Programme Ends With No Clear Future
Twenty-eight groups and businesses have sponsored almost 200 refugees in a three-year trial.
The Community Organisation Refugee Sponsorship (CORS) programme helps newcomers secure rentals, enrol at schools and doctors, find jobs and make connections locally.
Criteria include refugees being aged 18-45, understanding basic English and having either work skills or a tertiary education. Refugees can be nominated by sponsors or referred by the UNHCR.
Associate Immigration Minister Casey Costello is awaiting a report analysing the scheme's outcomes, and said approved CORS refugees were still arriving.
"I have a lot of faith in that process, I think it is a very good programme, but we still need to await that review and determine what that will look like into the future," she told MPs at a recent scrutiny committee meeting.
"I personally am a significant supporter of the programme, I think it's been a highly successful model. It is, I think, an excellent way of engaging with community directly we've seen some very good success models up in Whangārei, it was a real wraparound engagement."
But MPs were concerned that there could be a hiatus after the trial, putting its progress at risk, because there was no specific budget allocation.
Costello said Cabinet would have to decide whether it continued at all, and also if it could be funded from existing funds or needed to wait for a budget application next year.
"I think it is an excellent programme and I would love to see it continue, again those decisions would have to be made by Cabinet."
'This programme can save lives'
Community group Multicultural Whangārei sponsored Nimo Ahmed to become the first refugee in the pilot programme.
She escaped war-torn Somalia in 2017 and got to Indonesia, where she worked as a volunteer interpreter and teacher for the Church World Service. In 2018, she founded The Sisterhood Foundation, a refugee-led organisation advocating for the rights of women and girls.
Ahmed arrived in Whangārei in 2023 as a sponsored refugee. ON Tuesday, INZ announced she had been appointed to its refugee advisory panel.
"Although Whangārei had no refugees before, I initially thought it might be difficult, because people wouldn't understand my background," she said. "Fortunately, they welcomed me for who I am and reassured me that, if I ever needed help, they were there for me.
"The Community Sponsorship Programme didn't isolate me or control my choices - it gave me a fresh start. I truly believe this programme can save lives.
"It can give girls and boys like me the chance to feel whole again - to be heard, to contribute and to chase our dreams."
Other countries - including Australia, the UK, Spain and Germany - have piloted or established community sponsorship programmes.
Immigration New Zealand contracted HOST International to oversee the pilot, which finished on Monday.
"Overall, a total of 193 sponsored refugees have been welcomed by 28 sponsor groups across 12 locations, and they are settling in well into their communities," said HOST chief executive Birgit Grafarend-Watungwa.
"There is strong interest from communities and existing sponsor groups in seeing the programme continue. We are now focusing our efforts on advocating for a permanent, complementary Community Refugee Sponsorship programme that will enable more refugees to reach safety and successfully rebuild their lives within our communities."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
RNZ News
an hour ago
- RNZ News
David Apatang sworn in as CNMI's 10th governor
David Mundo Apatang was sworn in by Chief Justice Alexandro C. Castro as the CNMI's 11th governor on 24 July at the Governor's Office conference room in Saipan. Photo: Facebook / Mariana Press David Mundo Apatang was sworn as the CNMI's 11th governor early this morning, July 24, at the Governor's Office conference room on Capitol Hill. The 77-year-old Vietnam War veteran was sworn in by Chief Justice Alexandro Castro. He succeeds the late governor Arnold Palacios, who suddenly passed last July 23 after being medically evacuated to Guam earlier in the day. During the emotional swearing in, which was held in front of Cabinet members, lawmakers, and Apatang's family, the former lieutenant governor's voice cracked several times as the raw emotion of Palacios' passing the day before overcame him. Apatang paused a few seconds and struggled to say "governor" after Castro asked him to repeat the words, "I will faithfully and honestly discharge my duties as the governor of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands to the best of my ability, so help me God." Castro then hugged Apatang after the oath-taking with tears and sorrow palpable in both their faces. Apatang then addressed the assembled crowd at the packed Governor's Office conference room that now he commands. "Today (Thursday) is a very sad day. It's really hard to express what happened. Actually, you know, when we started this journey, we weren't expecting it to be like this," he said. Apatang said, like many in the Commonwealth over a rainy evening and early morning, he wasn't able to sleep. Commenting on his relationship with his predecessor, Apatang said he and Palacios didn't always see eye to eye, but there was always mutual respect and admiration. "Just like my inaugural speech, if you look back, I always say that if there's any difference between myself and the governor, it always comes up to working together at the end for the Commonwealth and our people. "My heart goes out to the family, first lady Wella, and their children. We will be working on an arrangement for the governor's arrival and his state funeral." Apatang then promised to carry on Palacios' work, saying, "We will continue to work together to follow his dreams and accomplish what we need to do for our people, just like he wants to do. That's exactly what we're going to do." With a Cabinet meeting set after the oathtaking, followed on Friday by a meeting with special assistants, Apatang reached out to the Legislature to help him plan for Palacios' state funeral. The swearing in ended with the new governor taking a group photo with his family before being congratulated by dozens of well-wishers. A couple of hours later at the same place, Senate President Dennis James Camacho Mendiola was sworn in as the CNMI's 14th lieutenant governor. Castro again administered the oath of office while Mendiola's son, Brian, held the Bible. Mendiola's wife is currently in Washington. In an impromptu speech after he was sworn in, Mendiola said his ascension to the post of lieutenant governor is not a time for celebration. "It's unprecedented time, of course. Nobody expected [us] to be here. It's not time for celebration. It's time for mourning for our late governor, and we're going to go ahead and respect that." Mendiola, a former commissioner of the Department of Fire and Emergency Medical Services and former special assistant of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, extended his condolences to the family of Palacios. He also admitted to having a heavy heart in accepting his new post. "I can go ahead and say that it's a constitutional mandate that I ascend. So, I'm going to go ahead and take this responsibility and, you know, work with the governor to ensure that we push a lot of these, you know, this situation that the CNMI is facing forward in the best interest of our people." In a light moment, Mendiola said he doesn't mind being scolded by Apatang since the latter earlier said that he would often scold Palacios when they had arguments because he was older by eight years. Apatang also said he has requested Guam Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero to expedite the death certificate for Palacios so the CNMI community can pay their respects to the late governor. As per the CNMI Constitution, the Senate presidency now goes to Karl King-Nabors, the former Senate vice president. King-Nabors said despite their differences, he always respects Palacios and extended his heartfelt condolences to first lady Wella and the rest of the family. "These are difficult times. We're a small community. Regardless of the difficulties or whatever perceived misunderstandings we might have, or misalignments, unalignment with our political agendas, we feel the loss of our community." He said, for now, Senator Donald Manglona remains floor leader with the Senate reorganisation awaiting the return of senators Celina Babauta and Corina Magofna, who are both off-island. King-Nabors added that former senator Paul Manglona is expected to take over the vacated seat of Mendiola. "My understanding of it is that it is the last, most recent election's highest vote getter, so that would be senator Paul [will be returning] to the Senate," he said.
NZ Herald
an hour ago
- NZ Herald
Passport redesign and Hulk Hogan dead at 71
Government plans to redesign the New Zealand passport to put English before te reo, and professional wrestling icon Hulk Hogan has died aged 71. Video / NZ Herald
NZ Herald
3 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Erica Stanford faces greatest NCEA test
Arguably, Stanford's most important move was the simplest: her ban on smartphones in schools informed by New York University's Professor Jonathan Haidt. The damage smartphones do to developing minds is comparable to alcohol and cannabis, so that nothing else will much matter if they're not sensibly regulated. At least, they must be kept out of schools, which Stanford delivered three weeks after being sworn in. Likewise, no amount of money or other reforms would much matter if primary students remained in barn-like so-called modern learning environments (MLEs), pushed on schools by the Key Government for reasons never properly explained and retained by Jacinda Ardern's Education Minister, Chris Hipkins. Effectively compulsory until Stanford arrived, she quickly made MLEs voluntary and has now banned new ones from being built altogether. But these were quick-win prerequisites to ensure structured learning could begin again in primary classrooms. Stanford also began the much more difficult work of restoring content and rigour to the school curriculum. First were new maths and English curricula, spelling out clearly what teachers are meant to teach, and how. That departs from recent decades, when subject curricula would instead focus on 'outcomes', leaving teachers to work out what to do for their students to achieve them. Now, practical teaching resources are included in curriculum documents, with over 800,000 new maths resources already provided to primary schools. That the curriculum was not just launched but is already being implemented in 92% of primary schools suggests Stanford has a rare ability to force bureaucrats to do what she wants, rather than the reverse. It's too simplistic to call Stanford's new maths and English curricula 'back to basics', but they do focus more on teachers passing on knowledge to students than on facilitating 'learners' to discover or invent knowledge themselves. The latter can wait for primary students to start their post-graduate work in a decade or two. In the meantime, Stanford's curriculum assumes there's foundational stuff they need to learn first. Following maths and English, the next priorities are the natural sciences, the social sciences, health, and Te Reo Māori. Stanford's curriculum reforms will become harder politically as they move into more contested subjects. But the politics may be easier if her focus remains on foundational knowledge, delivered in a structured environment, in a logical sequence, rather than trying to introduce the latest and most advanced theories in primary classrooms. Kids need to learn addition before multiplication, how to read before how to interpret texts, about atoms before electrons, and that the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840 between the British Crown and Māori chiefs before considering how well it has been honoured. As these students reach secondary school, Stanford's next big decision is how to extend her approach into the qualifications system and what to do about NCEA. Political blame for NCEA can be shared widely. Every party in Parliament has been part of a government that contributed to the fiasco, and all were warned by the country's best educators that it would dumb down secondary education and lead to a two-tier system, benefiting the rich and well connected at the expense of the middle class and poor. Everyone meant well. The NCEA's origins were David Lange and Phil Goff's Learning for Life report, which recommended establishing the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) 'to provide an across-the-board approach to the validation of qualifications in schools and in vocational and advanced academic areas'. This was a response to everyone needing some form of higher education in a more advanced economy, and a desire to break down the distinction and allow cross-crediting between vocational training and academic study. National's Lockwood Smith saw the advantages in trying to clearly define what knowledge, understanding and skills students and people in the workforce were meant to achieve, and to worry less about where they might develop them and more about whether they had. He was backed by employers who argued they needed to know exactly what potential recruits knew and could do rather than that they had scored 59, 71 or 82 in an exam. The proposed system was at the centre of Smith's Education for the 21st Century, which I ghost-wrote. But politicians should always be wary of utopianism, and the idea that NZQA or anyone else could write or validate rigorous outcomes statements for the entirety of human knowledge and capabilities, and then operate a system giving each student a detailed certificate accurately recording what they knew and could do was preposterous. To National's credit, it was never confident to finally press go on the new system. That was left to Helen Clark's Labour Government. The Key and Ardern-Hipkins Governments then set up review panels and made tweaks, but basically left the system unchanged. Meanwhile, the universities never took the system seriously while increasing numbers of schools adopted foreign systems or tried to develop their own. The upshot is NCEA delivering the opposite of that intended. If students go to a school offering Cambridge or the International Baccalaureate or take a traditional university route, their qualification is taken seriously, domestically and internationally. If they don't, they're left with the NCEA which isn't. You don't need to be a Marxist to see who that has benefited, and it is surely not those Lange, Goff or anyone intended. Now, as revealed by the Weekend Herald, even the left-wing education bureaucracy accepts NCEA has failed. Stanford faces probably the most consequential decision she'll ever make. Will she follow the Key and Ardern-Hipkins Governments and try to save NCEA with another review? Or will she accept the whole concept was utopian from the outset, and has delivered the catastrophic unintended consequences utopian visions invariably bring? For better or worse, schools, parents and students have tended to favour Cambridge, an internationally recognised qualification originally developed for Third World countries without their own systems. Singapore used it for many years after independence while getting its house in order. The least-disruptive option would be Stanford following Singapore's approach, abolishing NCEA from Year 11 next year, and engaging with Cambridge to roll out its system nationwide. That would require demanding Cambridge work with New Zealand experts to develop rigorous assessments for subjects like New Zealand history and Te Reo Maori. For a long-term, nationwide contract, it would surely be prepared to do so. Like Singapore, we would then progressively evolve Cambridge's exams into a genuinely New Zealand system. Stanford moved swiftly and boldly on smartphones, MLEs and curriculum reform. The same is needed to quickly put the multi-decade, multi-party NCEA disaster behind us.
