We are a group of grade 7 Chestermere Lake Middle School students in a class that’s working on a large social studies project where we are making recommendations for actual immigrants and refugees currently arriving in Canada. On April 7th our class released a survey to this group to get a better understanding of their wants and needs. The survey ran for 10 days and ended on April 17th. Over the course of this time period 15 people took the survey. Although this isn’t a lot of data, when combined with the information we previously learned, this will still be of help.
When asked, “How many children are arriving in Canada with you?”, out of the 15 people who filled out the survey, 93% said they are arriving with children, which means we need to think about recommending a place near a school or somewhat close to a school. Also, if they have younger kids, we think they should be able to live in a neighbourhood that is safe and where they can freely play outside. We would want to avoid recommending that people with children live in an unsafe community or in a place where there is no grass to roll around in, like gravel, no sidewalks. We think they should either live in a friendly community or in safe house.
In the survey we did, it showed that 53% of the immigrants and refugees that took the survey will need to use public transportation. That means that they will have to live in a place that offers public transportation. This would likely mean that they would have to live in a larger city. In the same survey, it showed that around 20% of people are planning on having their own vehicle and they could live in a place with no public transportation. These people will also need to have a valid Canadian driver’s license, as well as insurance.
100% of people in our survey speak Arabic and only 53% of those also speak English. The survey also showed us that 40% of the respondents want to learn and or improve on their English by taking English classes. 53% have a university degree, master’s degree, or Phd. Roughly 73% want a better education like a degree of some sort. If someone is going to learn English, they should learn from someone that speaks the same language as them, in this case it’s Arabic. Based on the information gathered in our survey I think that it’s important that they should probably move to someplace where they have people around their neighbourhood that speak Arabic and that can teach them to speak English. They should also choose someplace close to their school/campus for their better education.
Hopefully, with the help of this data we will be able to make the best recommendations possible so we can help these people live the best life they can in Alberta.
The Survey Results
By Matthew Nowlan
The Chestermere Lake Middle School grade seven Social Studies students are currently learning about refugees and immigrants who are coming to Canada. We are finding out their wants and needs. We did a survey to get this information from them. The survey was conducted April 7-17.
67% of the people who answered the survey are refugees and 26% are immigrants. Most of them are from Syria. The survey showed that 100% of the people who took the survey spoke Arabic and only 53% could also speak English so some of them will need to take English classes.
93% of them have children. They are young families who will need to be in communities with schools near by. They will want to be close to recreational activities for children like sports centers, playgrounds and daycare facilities.
Only 20% of respondents said that they will likely own a car so they will need to live in a place that has a public transportation system like an LRT or buses. They will probably need to live in Calgary. 40% said that they would prefer an urban community so Calgary would be good for them. 40% preferred a rural community.
CLMS Grade 7 Survey Results
By: Angel Allen, Jaslene Khera, Sarah Leveille, Breanna Soles, Radwit Zaman
Refugees and immigrants who have recently come to Canada filled out a survey that our grade 7 social studies class made to gather information for this project. We have the results to see where people want to go and what their needs are. Three people who took the survey are immigrants, ten are refugees and three people said other. 15 people can speak Arabic, 8 speak english, and other ones speak syriac, Kurdish, Turkish,and hebrew. Syria is where 14 people came from, 1 person came from Palestine.
Most people had at least 1 other adult with them, but a few had three adults with them. Did you know that most people had children that were about 10 to about 15+ years old? A couple of people had 3 children that were arriving with them. 1 person had no children with them, a few people also had 1 child with them, 2 people had 2 children with them, half a dozen have 3 children with them, and 2 had at least 4 childrens with them.
Most of them want their primary form of transportation to be public transportation, although some will get help from family/friends or drive themselves. Most people do not have family members here already, if they do they usually live in southern Alberta.The types of education that people need and looking for are: Public school, Catholic school, College, University, Vocational Training, and English classes. A lot of people need access to post-secondary education.
Calgary, Airdrie and banff are the top 3 places people wanted to live at and around. Airdrie is a growing city with lots of opportunities for jobs and houses. Banff is beautiful town with lots of friendly people. Calgary is a big city with many education opportunities. We think that these three are excellent choices for their needs.
How can this information help us?
This information is important because, we can now understand where the refugees and immigrants want to live and also more information on their personal life. Also because of the survey we are able to know what type of education they need, and also what types of schools that they need to be close to. Another helpful piece of information we received was their religon, and because of that we know what type of religious services they need access to.
Why is this information important?
The survey is important because we learned what is considered a need to a refugee and where is an ideal place to live if you have recently or just moved here. Most of the survey results suggest a lot of people wanted to move to Calgary, Airdrie, Banff or Cochrane. This may be because most of these places have education, transportation, jobs to give and a steady economy so that people can thrive and survive.
What did we learn?
We learned that lots of refugees and immigrants have different needs from us. We also learned that there was only a few more than a dozen filling out the survey, so we thought that not many people that filled it out because some people might not know how to read or don’t understand the questions. This survey will really help us with our social studies project that we are doing.
