The world is facing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. According to the most recent statistics from the United Nations Refugee Agency, a staggering 65.6 million people are now forcibly displaced and in 2016, an average of 34,000 individuals were forced to flee their homes every single day. 22.5 million are refugees or asylum seekers and over 50% are children. Unfortunately, less than 200,000 refugees were resettled to safe countries in 2016.
Canada has been a world leader in refugee resettlement, in particular because of its unique Private Sponsorship Program. While other countries have closed their doors on those in need of protection, the energy of Canadians to respond to the global refugee crisis is increasing and interest in private refugee sponsorship has been growing across Canada. We, at the Refugee Sponsorship Support Program (SSP), train and support lawyers who then provide support to Canadians in private sponsorship applications.
Challenge
Volunteer lawyers are the heart and soul of the work that we do. The SSP is looking for a way to recruit and onboard lawyers in a more exciting and controlled manner. Right now we have a web page sign up that lawyers fill in to sign up and then we direct them to the online training that they need to do. We rely on the lawyers to let us know when they have completed the online training. We would like to have a way to maintain an element of quality control once we have referred them to the training.