A study out of the Rural Development Institute at Brandon University is taking a look at the ability of small communities to resettle refugees. 'Immigration Settlement Services in Five Rural Manitoba Communities: An Inventory and Opportunity Assessment with a Focus on Refugees' was initiated by the Manitoba Association of Newcomer Serving Organizations and analyzed the successes and challenges of settlement services/organizations in the target communities of the Altona-Winkler-Morden-Carman area, Steinbach, Dauphin, Portage la Prairie and Killarney.

"...We've worked with Rural Development Institute on a couple different research projects about settlement services and access to support for newcomers to Manitoba in different small communities," explains Bequie Lake, Director of Settlement Support
for MANSO. She adds this latest study is like the second part to this earlier work because there had been a lot of energy and focus on refugee resettlement in the past nine months. "We decided to have a little bit more of a look at small communities' ability to resettle refugees."

Bill Ashton, Director of the RDI, explains the process began with selecting a representative sample of the smaller cities in Manitoba while trying to make sure they were from a geographically diverse area. He adds that much of the data was collected through interviews with upwards of thirty senior officials with service-providing organizations.

He says because the plan to bring refugees to Canada unfolded fairly quickly, the research team wanted to know how refugees were landing in smaller cities in Manitoba and what were the challenges being faced by the local service organizations.

Lake adds it was also interesting to look at how these funded settlement organizations interacted with the sponsorship groups that help to financially support the refugees, and where they see gaps in services.

"And then as an umbrella organization, and I think as others that will use this research later on, it gives us an opportunity to look at some of the challenges and figure out if there's a strategy that we can use to try to resolve those challenges in order to offer the best support that we can to refugee families so that they're able to settle well and integrate in the long-term."

She says other challenges include finding affordable housing and childcare, issues faced by many people in Canada.

Ashton adds however, there is clear evidence of a number of services that are going well.

"While there is some concern with housing, but certainly there is some capacity around housing and healthcare services and schooling."

He explains that because immigration is continually needed to offset the declining growth rate in Canada, these challenges aren't going to go away and a system is needed to reach outside of large cities.

"Rural communities, large and small, are welcoming and they can, and are, providing settlement services for them to not only just short-term reside but be able to retain and find employment and be able to be integrated into community. I think there's a great story here around it reaches beyond just a simple organization and it reaches well into the community in terms of church groups, etc that are helping to settle and integrate individuals into these communities."

Lake says MANSO will share this input with local service organizations and all three levels of government and look for solutions to these challenges.