A second family of refugees from Syria may soon call Whitehorse home.

Hillary Gladish, who is leading the initiative on behalf of the Riverdale Baptist Church, said this week the family is expected to arrive sometime in the next four to 12 weeks.

Though she doesn’t know all the details yet, Gladish said the family includes a stay-at-home mother, a father who is trained as a mechanic, crane operator and heavy equipment operator, one child who is 12 and 11-year-old twins.

They come to the Yukon from Damascus and Aleppo by way of Turkey.

“It’s important to fulfill our obligation and responsibility as global citizens and be able to respond to the current crisis,” Gladish told the Star about why the church is helping bring Syrian refugees to Canada.

“This is just one way that we can be active participants in our local and our global communities.”

The Riverdale Baptist Church applied to sponsor the family through the Blended Visa Office-Referred (BVOR) Program. That Canadian government venture matches private sponsors with refugees selected by the United Nations Refugee Agency.

Through the BVOR program, the federal government and private sponsors work together to support refugees as they settle into their new lives in Canada.

Ottawa offers up to six months of income assistance and the sponsor is responsible for another six months of income.

The program also requires the private sponsor to provide social and emotional support for a year.

The refugee is not expected to pay or reimburse the sponsor.

The difference between BVOR sponsorship and purely private sponsorship is that with the latter, the sponsor is responsible for supporting the refugee(s) financially for a whole year, as opposed to just six months.

Yukon Cares, a non-denominational volunteer organization aimed at resettling refugees in the Yukon, used the BVOR program to bring the first family of Syrian refugees to Whitehorse. That family of 11 arrived last January.

This is the Riverdale Baptist Church’s second attempt at bringing a family of refugees to the Yukon.

Initially, the Canadian Baptists of Western Canada matched the church with a family in Iraq, anticipating that the group could immigrate in one to four months.

The church hit a bump in the road when it learned that, because there is no Canadian Visa Office in Iraq, it could take up to 51 months to process the application, which involves an interview, security and medical checks.

“We received an email from Immigration Canada that they were aware of the application and because the family is Syrian, the application is a priority,” said Gladish.

The Canadian government may send a selection mission to Iraq this fall, but “they’re asking the family to be patient,” she said.

Still, it was the church’s goal to help resettle refugees as quickly as possible.

“To this end, RBC (Riverdale Baptist Church) has decided to pursue sponsorship of a second Syrian family while we continue to wait for our first family to be processed,” the church said in an update on its website.

So far, the church has raised $46,000 and has been given an additional $18,500 from the Yukon government, said Gladish.

“Based on the initial budget that we’ve put together, with donations from church and the greater Whitehorse community, the Yukon government and the Canadian government, and also the Canada Child Benefit, based on all of those combined, we’ve calculated that we’re on track to support both those families,” she said.

“We still have a commitment to them (the family from Iraq), and they’re privately sponsored, so we would be responsible for them the whole year.”

Included in the budget are rent, utilities, transportation, education, health care and “everything that you can think of that any family would be required to pay for,” said Gladish.

“We have had some really generous donations, one being bus passes from the City of Whitehorse,” she added.

The church is still looking for a three-bedroom home for the family, ideally somewhere central, because the family won’t have a vehicle.

It is also hoping that a translator will come forward.

“We don’t want to overextend the Arabic-speaking community so we’re also looking for someone with Turkish-speaking skills,” said Gladish.

Though the church is behind the resettlement effort, Gladish said religion played no part in deciding who to sponsor.

“That was one of the decisions that the church membership felt it was very important to stress,” she said.

“It was really important to them that it didn’t matter who it was, just that it was responding to a family in need.”

Of course, the transition to life in Whitehorse won’t be easy, but the personal support provided by local sponsors certainly helps.

The Yukon’s first family of refugees from Syria is proof of that.

“They’re really happy and thankful for everything, they like living here,” said Yukon Cares founder Raquel De Queiroz.

After 5 1/2 months in the territory, the family has experienced its first northern winter and its first midnight sun.

“(The late sunlight) was a big challenge for Ramadan because they’re not supposed to eat or drink anything until the sun goes down,” said De Queiroz, a nurse practitioner.

“It was a very long fast for them but they did it,” she said.

The family went without eating until around 11:00 each night of the month of Ramadan.

The family even went out to the Canada Day parade, braving the tempting aromas that emanated from the food stands.

Though the winter was hard, the family is settling in well, said De Queiroz.

The older girls and adults are taking English classes at the Multicultural Centre.

Some of the younger girls are going to summer camp at the Whitehorse Public Library and the Yukon Wildlife Preserve.

Two of the older boys are working at a local Shoppers Drug Mart, and one of them is training to be a hairdresser.

The kids especially are enjoying life in the Yukon, said De Queiroz. They are happy to be back in the classroom after four years of not being able to go to school.

Yukon Cares and the family will host a gathering at the Copperbelt Railway and Mining Museum from 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday to say thank you to the community for their gifts and support. The family will serve cake.