A Foothills family is hoping to help make life better for a refugee family.

Dr. Peter Doell and his wife Joyce have committed to privately sponsoring the Dawood family, a Iraqi family of 5 who have fled their homes in order to survive.

Doell says there is two types of sponsorship, public (where the government and tax payers pay for living expenses of the immigrants), and private sponsorship.

"Our family is privately sponsored, that means we have undertaken to provide all of their living costs for a 12 month period." Doell says many don't understand the responsibilities when it comes to sponsoring a refugee. " All of those kinds of things that we need for living like food, shelter and alike, we will provide for them; Than there are other aspects that are perhaps less obvious, those have to do with arranging for health care, and Social Insurance Numbers etc."

The Dawood family has recently arrived and settled in SW Calgary and the Doell's along with their home bible study partners, have set up formal English classes for Basim and Faten Dawood and their three daughters Karmen, Clara, and Katya.

Doell was pleased to share that their oldest daughter, Karmen, is already attending school for the first time in her life.

"The eldest child is 10, and has never been to school.  They couldn't attend because it simply wasn't safe enough for them to be out or away from their parents, even after fleeing to Turkey. They've had quite the life."

Doell says he and his wife have done this because of a sense of moral obligation to those who are less fortunate, and to set an example for those who he claims, have an ethnocentric or anti-immigration bias.

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