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End of mission is a time of deep reflection and slow adjustment. When I was deployed to Germany as a Canadian Red Cross delegate, my life changed drastically. Working as an interpreter in a German Red Cross transit camp for refugees, I experienced a complete shift in lifestyle. I went from a quiet 9-5 to non-stop 12 hour shifts, welcoming a thousand refugees every night. I adjusted quickly because the rapid pace of response left no room for easing in. When the end of my mission came, I braced myself for another major life change: going back to normal. 

Here's an overview of the services the Canadian Red Cross will provide to Syrian refugees arriving in Canada in the coming weeks and months.  

When Jillian Wright of Ottawa, Ontario was approaching her seventh birthday on October 23, she told her friends and family that instead of gifts she wanted money so that she could donate to the Red Cross to help Syrian children.

Toronto-based disaster management expert Sarah Oberholzer shares stories of two Syrian refugees working as translators during her mission at the camp in Erding, Germany.

Adeola Adebayo, a nurse in Halifax, recently returned from Germany where he assisted in the refugee response efforts. For a month, he worked in Feldkirchen and Erding refugee camps run by the German Red Cross.

Two weeks ago, our world looked a bit different. We were providing psycho-social support at a transit camp for refugees near Munich in Germany as part of a Canadian Red Cross team assisting the German Red Cross. There we witnessed the best of humanity, the resilience and the courage of refugees, as well as the devastating effects of conflict in home countries, and the consequences of trauma during migration.

While Germany continues to take in thousands of refugees fleeing violence in their countries, the German Red Cross welcomes them into reception centres and camps. Canadian Red Cross staff member Esther Laforte, Deputy Director, Disaster Management in Quebec, was deployed to a camp in Erding, Germany, to support the German Red Cross' refugee response efforts.

The sun is rising over the camp in Idomeni, Greece, on the border with Macedonia. It’s nearly impossible to keep count of the buses that have been arriving one after another over the last few hours. Each bus has around 50 passengers — refugees and migrants — who undertook a perilous journey in the hope of a better life. Among them are women, men, newborns, elderly people, sick children, pregnant women, people with disabilities…