Good morning. My name is Morteza Jafarpour. This is a very interesting coincidence for me, because 17 years ago today I arrived in Canada as a refugee claimant. It was the day I came to safety, but at the same time there was a big shift in my career from being a medical doctor to becoming a pizza driver.
As Wai mentioned earlier, I am a member of CISSA and I also chair the Ontario caucus of CISSA. In real life, I am executive director of an organization with the long name of the Settlement and Integration Services Organization, with the short name SISO. We provide a variety of services for immigrants and refugees that include settlement services, volunteer services, a host program, a language assessment centre, and also employment services.
With regard to the kinds of newcomers we serve in our organization, around 80% of our clients are landed immigrants or independent immigrants or family class. Also, 20% of the clients we see are refugees. We have around 320 to 350 government-assisted refugees and we have been involved with many different groups who have come. Especially after changes in legislation, we have seen government-assisted refugees with different kinds of needs and history from what we used to see.
One of the interesting parts of being in southern Ontario is the number of refugee claimants we have seen in the last few years, although after the safe third country agreement we have seen a drop in that regard. But being close to Fort Erie, by the year 2003, almost 60% of our clients were refugee claimants. We also have worked very closely with a sponsoring group regarding the private sponsorship group. We have been involved in all these areas. Our agency has a staff of 60 coming from 45 different ethnic and country backgrounds. Our staff has the ability the talk in more than 50 languages right now.
Before I turn to Fariborz, I need to highlight one thing. Historically, the vision of the role of settlement services has been that their job is to settle and integrate immigrants or refugees. Settlement integration is a personal journey. The role of any institution is not to settle individuals. In fact, the role the settlement sector and CISSA is advocating is about creating conditions for immigrant refugees to settle and integrate. And creating that condition is providing services, working with emerging and existing interracial communities, and working with mainstream cultural organizations to make sure their services are accessible and available for new citizens and new immigrants, public education and definitely dialogue, and working in the public policy area.
Thank you very much.