The Catholic Centre for Immigrants in Ottawa welcomes and integrates newcomers to Canada and gives them the tools to adapt, settle and find friends.
Carl Nicholson (see photo above) was introduced to the Stittsville Rotarians on Nov 04, 2020 as a man with a mission to build a better world and as he described Catholic Centre for Immigrants (CCI) it was easy to see why he has been the executive director there since 1994. Carl is committed to social justice and so is CCI. In fact, immigrants represent almost one quarter of the population of Ottawa.
The organization now has 120 staff who speak as many as 50 languages, hundreds of volunteers and many partnerships with other community agencies and together they operate an extensive list of programs to the benefit of hundreds of clients.
Carl sums the CCI purpose in just one sentence: to welcome and integrate newcomers to Canada and give them the tools to adapt, settle and find friends. The recent announcement by the federal government that Canada will welcome one million people in the next 3 years underlines the ongoing urgent need for such an agency to make that initiative work.
Currently CCI has an annual budget of $10M with 85% provided by the government and the remainder acquired through fund raising (Stittsville Rotary donated to CCI last year). CCI offers a wide variety of programs and services: pre-arrival assistance, housing, school, career transition, language, mentoring, transportation and food bank/groceries. http://cciottawa.ca/