This wasn’t in Ruth Beardsley’s job description.
The Richmond woman, who was a senior manager with Options Community Services Society in Surrey — a non-profit charity providing social services in Surrey, Delta, White Rock and Langley — was certainly used to helping refugee families adjust to their lives in Canada. But to place herself on the front line and bring a three year-old girl back from Kenya to reunite her with her mom and five siblings who had come to Canada?
That was going above and beyond.
But Beardsley managed it. And for her efforts she was recently recognized with the 2016 United Way Community Partner Award and the establishment of the United Way Ruth Beardsley Reunification Fund in her honour, which will help bring refugee families together.
“I didn’t set out knowing this is what I was going to do,” Beardsley told the News. “But I just felt the heartache this mother felt, making the decision to leave her daughter behind.
“It was the right thing to do.”
It was 2008 when Zeynab, the mother of six children who had fled Ethiopia, was granted refugee access to Canada. But the paperwork only called for five of her children to accompany her.
Her sixth, two-month-old Nasteha, had not been born when the refugee process had started and was left off the documents.
Officials told Zeynab at gunpoint she would not be allowed to take the little girl with her to a new life in Canada.
“One of the programs I was responsible for was called the First Step Early Years Refugee program where we supported families who had young children,” said Beardsley, adding it was through that she learned of the plight facing Zeynab who had given birth to Nasteha in the UN refugee camp in Nairobi.
“Nasteha simply wasn’t on the list,” Beardsley said. “I felt so bad that someone would be put in this position of having to choose to bring her other five children to safety or stay behind with her baby, not knowing if she’d ever be able to get out of Kenya.”
Despite not being experienced in the reunification process before she heard Zeynab’s story, Beardsley started helping find out how to help.
In the end, it took three and a half years to gain permission to bring Nasteha to Canada.
“It was a very confusing process. We weren’t certain it was going to happen,” Beardsley said. “But I was the person most familiar with the case and I just wanted to see this reunification happen.
“Just being persistent helped get the paperwork done,” she added.
Before Zeynab left Kenya, Nasteha was, at first, going to be left in the care of a neighbour at the refugee camp. But the night before leaving for Canada, the girl’s aunt, Ebla, was enlisted to provide care.
“That aunt basically kept her alive under very difficult circumstances,” Beardsley said, who arrived in Nairobi in 2012 and had to endure a drawn out process to gain the correct documentation to get the girl turned over to her.
“It wasn’t an easy trip,” Beardsley said. “From day to day, we weren’t sure whether we were going to be able to bring her back with us.
“They wouldn’t give us the papers immediately. We had to make four or five trips to the embassy and each time they made an excuse why we couldn’t get the travel documents,” Beardsley said. “Essentially, it came to them wanting a bribe from me. I didn’t pick up on the cues about that, not wanting to believe this was happening.”
But repeated calls to the Kenyan embassy back home in Canada helped get the process back on track and no bribe was ever paid for Nasteha’s release.
Four years later and the family is doing well, with Nasteha thriving in school, having learned to speak English quickly.
“Her mom is very jealous about that,” Beardsley said with a laugh.
Her father was not able to be at the refugee camp for lack of documentation and now Beardsley is in the process of trying to get him passage to Canada and complete the reunification.
“It brings me great joy to see this family together now,” Beardsley said.
“Zeynab was told to forget about her baby. But she couldn’t. And as a mom myself, I could relate to that.”
One of her sons, who accompanied Beardsley on the trip, made a documentary about the experience called My Heart in Kenya and is trying to get it shown on the film festival circuit.
A trailer for the film is viewable online at Vimeo.com/85997488.
