Taking That First Step

I don't know what happened in the last year, but somehow I got over my fear of taking risks.
Ok, well maybe not the big crazy ones like jumping out of planes or high stakes investment banking but the smaller, more nuanced stuff like  being silly in public (improv clases), and falling in love (He likes me! He really, really likes me!). Maybe it was the advent of my 40's but these days I find myself more able to take that first scary step.

In early september the impact of the Syrian conflict was made crystal clear to us in one single photograph. I felt anger, frustration, and anguish that from where I stood, in my priviledged Toronto life, there was so little I could do on a personal level to help. My feelings were echoed back to me wherever I looked and by whomever I spoke to. On the news, I watched as Germany opened it's arms wide to welcome their new arrivals.  I saw ordinary German and Austrian citizens showing up at train stations simply to greet Syrian refugees and offer a welcome handshake and some food. With fear in the pit of my stomach and the dread that I would try and fail, I decided to take a first step and enter the world of Canadian Refugee Sponsorship

Clearly, welcoming refugees to Canada would not be as simple as the Germans made it seem, and not only for geographical reasons.  I knew right away that this was not something to ever be attempted single-handedly. So I did what we do now, in the age of social networking: I created a Facebook page and asked if anyone was interested in joining me.  Within minutes a few brave souls had linked arms with me and the rest, well, a bit of it is history, but the majority of it still lies before us.

It's been roughly one month since that first step was taken. Today our Facebook group added it's 150th member. That means 150 people have taken that first step with me. With any luck, we will have managed to bring a refugee family safely home to Toronto in the next 3-12 months.

This blog will document our groups journey. If it inspires even one other person to step out of their comfort zone for the benefit of someone else, I'll be so very, very happy.

P.S. This is also my very first blog. I don't even keep a journal, so bear with me as I navigate format changes, bad punctuation and typos.