Employment assistance: the Atwater Library meets the needs of English-speaking newcomers

Since October, the Atwater Library has been offering volunteer-led job search services. The CELI Career Fair is a casual event where migrants — asylum seekers and refugees — can find advice on how to get a job in an intimate way. The majority of them express themselves better in English, so help can be offered to them in that language.

Another goal of the career center? “It's an accessible place, where there are few barriers to participation and where people can come and seek help finding a job, improving their professional skills, or simply have a contact person to discuss their job search process,” says Maya Garfinkel, the project coordinator at the Atwater Library.

The sessions take place on the second floor of the establishment, built in 1920, with all that that implies: wood paneling on the walls and huge arched windows. The library has been designated a “Historic Site of Canada” and meetings take place on church pews in a large room.

For Maya, managing expectations is important: “We're really trying to help people where they are at by providing resources as lay employment counsellors.”

Two men, smiling, say goodbye to Maya. They came looking for some tips for their job search, but need to save themselves to get to the local food bank on time. “It's really the reality they have to deal with,” she says.

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The genesis of a need

Because of its proximity to the YMCA, which houses asylum seekers, the library is often frequented by asylum seekers, who use it for computers, among other things, for a small fee. At the Atwater Library, the majority of the “employees” are in fact volunteers. They therefore often found themselves in a particular situation for which they were not prepared, says Liz Perrin, digital literacy manager.

Indeed, they noted a constant demand for CV printing. “Someone arrives and asks the volunteer: “I just need to print my resume,” and the volunteer is really just equipped to say, “Okay, email it to me or let me help you connect to your email,” says Ms. Perrin.

However, quite quickly in this kind of conversation, the volunteer realizes that the person needs help creating a resume. “Access to a printer is great, but the resume doesn't even exist yet. So I think it was a big driver to do something to meet that need,” she said.

Idriss* worked for a long time in Mauritania in a recognized organization where he did housekeeping. “In my country, slavery still exists,” he whispers half-heartedly. The man in his thirties was therefore never able to go to school.

Although the West African country abolished hereditary slavery in 1981, modern slavery persists there. In 2023, Mauritania also takes third place on the sordid world ranking of countries where modern slavery is the most widespread.u.

Idriss speaks French only, but he gets the help he needs to start his job search at the Atwater Library Fair, even though his target audience is the English-speaking asylum seeker population. If he has his work permit, he faces a major challenge: he cannot read or write. The job fair therefore offers him first access to resources. “I want to work, but for the moment, I have not found anything yet. It's difficult because sometimes they give me forms to fill out, and it's complicated...” he lets go.

“It was a Senegalese friend who told me about it at the YMCA”, adds the man who, today, found an apartment.

Although Idriss is French-speaking, this is far from being the case for all visitors to the job fair. “We are bilingual, and even multilingual,” says Liz. She says that this project is “planting seeds in the city” because it tries to build a bridge between several organizations such as the YMCA, but also an organization in Sherbrooke that gives literacy lessons in English.

Libraries to help refugees and asylum seekers

The Atwater Library was founded in 1828. Today, it operates independently from the rest of the network of municipal libraries in the City of Montreal. Its operation differs in many ways, among other things because, as we said, the majority of its employees are not employees: they are volunteers who make the place work. At the heart of the library's mission are refresher courses and digital literacy. It is not surprising that the employment assistance program for newcomers was born there.

While this program meets a pressing need in the community that frequents it, the Atwater Library is not the only one offering assistance to asylum seekers and refugees. The Vancouver Library System (VPL) has a link page for refugees and asylum seekers on its website.

“When we welcomed Ukrainian refugees, we put in place housing assistance resources,” says Alicia Cheng, information manager at VPL. We direct them to the corresponding resources. But there are other questions. Immigrants, we inform them about resources related to immigration. Then, at some point, some people are looking for more specific things, so we help them as best we can.”

Closer to Montreal, the Libraries of New York support asylum seekers. In 2023, during the presentation of the Big Apple's municipal budget, its director general insisted on the importance of maintaining the budget allocated to the institution because of its role in the integration of asylum seekers.

Research also shows the crucial role of public libraries in the integration of migrants. : “Migrants are also looking for free access to the Internet and digital resources. [...] From the perspective of migrants, isolation, illiteracy, and prejudices or lack of knowledge about the library are highlighted [as obstacles].”

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Create social connections to help

There was no sign that the program would offer volunteers a chance to share their experience and reassure newcomers, who are often apprehensive.

“Sometimes, I see two people talking and I think to myself that they are two volunteers who already know each other, but one of them is a customer, and they have just met”, surprised Liz, pleasantly surprised, is surprised.

It is the mutual support between volunteers and participants that makes this type of exchange unique, because everyone is on an equal footing. “We try to be really good at managing expectations, without ever positioning ourselves as experts,” she says.

They came from Iran, Algeria, Kenya, Kenya, Mauritania or Chad that day. Not all of them speak English, but those who do better in this language are served without problems.

Because of partnerships, especially with the Refugee Center, some volunteers are refugees themselves and can therefore share their experience with newcomers who need to discover everything.

“I think that people who have had this experience or who know people who have had it are really eager to help. It is a very powerful driver”, says the woman who has witnessed several situations of great vulnerability between participants and volunteers.

“Even if it's not the same experience, the emotions are there. It makes creating an email account, for example, much more intimate and warm, even if it's a relatively trivial thing.”

“When a volunteer is able to show that vulnerability, go beyond the technical elements, and reach out to someone, that makes all the difference, and that's perhaps something more difficult to achieve when you're in a larger, more bureaucratic social services world,” she concludes.

A volunteer from Kenya is waiting to welcome someone to help her. In the meantime, she is looking for a job herself. She knows that her high level experience in her country of origin will probably not be recognized here. Besides, she does not yet master the language, she who arrived in Quebec in December.

Welcomed as a refugee, she makes a point of helping others by volunteering. When asked if she plans to leave Quebec, she frowns and exclaims that she loves Montreal. “I want to settle here and learn French,” she says. It may be easier to go to Ontario, but I think I could be happy here,” she says.

In a report published on February 14, the Commissioner for the French Language of Quebec, Benoît Dubreuil, proposes that asylum seekers who do not speak French be redirected to an English-speaking province. He suggests “to refer people seeking asylum to provinces whose main language they know” to avoid the costs of teaching the language as part of francization courses.

For his part, Idriss is still looking for a job. Telephone in hand, he has been crisscrossing the city for two months to solve all the problems he encounters: looking for housing, winter clothes, jobs. The Atwater Job Fair is a short step to help him climb the stairs of integration.

“Here, there is a lot of freedom and a lot of possibilities,” he concludes.

* An alias to protect the identity of the person.

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