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This article demonstrates The Salvation Army’s key value of respect.
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STEVIE HOPE Editorial Assistant Salvationist
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Salvationist 22 June 2024
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‘The project offers language classes, a speaking club, food vouchers, food parcels, clothing, cultural trips and hygiene packs,’ outlines corps officer Major Stephen Noble. ‘We also help cover transportation costs and arrange trips to the dentist. Alongside that, we support community sponsorship groups.’ The hub for all this activity is the Sunflower Café, which opens weekly to offer a taste of home. It’s a space not only for enjoying borscht but also for Ukrainian people to meet, work, volunteer and uplift each other. Café Manager Inna Moroz is a refugee supported by a community sponsorship group. ‘It’s just not about global projects,’ she reminds me. ‘We are trying to create a home from home, and it’s about gathering, communication and integration.’
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HERE would you go if you couldn’t live where you live? According to the UN Refugee Agency, this is a question that 117.3 million people worldwide had to genuinely consider at the end of 2023. For dozens of the many people displaced by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the answer to this question – whether by choice or mandate – was Scarborough. Recognising the influx of newcomers, Scarborough Corps responded and thus bloomed the Sunflower Project. At the heart of the project is the desire to live out the value of respect – welcoming each person with the dignity of those created in the image of God. But not content to simply welcome, the project is set up to equip people with everything they need to live and thrive in a foreign culture.
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Stevie Hope finds out about the refugee-led support blooming at Scarborough’s Sunflower Café
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A home from home
Stephen adds: ‘It’s more than a task to do. It’s supporting their families back in Ukraine, who know that their relatives are being cared for and loved, even though they’re in a different country. ‘We don’t like using the term “refugees” because they have become family – the sense that we have is that it’s a family gathering. We have great food and great conversations, and the café has continued to go from strength to strength!’ Stephen is a strong advocate for projects like this but warns against imposing solutions. True progress, he suggests, emerges when we come alongside refugee communities to find out what they really need. As the adage goes, nothing about us without us. ‘The success here is that Ukrainian people are serving Ukrainian people,’ he delights. ‘And their knowledge about and love for each other shines way beyond anything that we could bring alone.’ Considering the future of the project, Inna and Stephen both hope it will close soon. While it is an invaluable resource for the community, the vast majority of the people they speak to long to return to their homeland when it’s safe. In the meantime, however, The Salvation Army in Scarborough is serving people without discrimination. In a world that too often feels loveless, this team follows the call to share God’s love. ‘We are really happy to be part of the Salvation Army family,’ Inna concludes. ‘For standing with us, for understanding us and for letting us have homes from home.’
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