Anthony*

In the heart of Lake Kivu, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), there’s a small island called Idjwi. For Anthony*, this wasn’t just an island; it was his home.

Anthony left Idjwi to pursue a career in healthcare, attending college near the capital of the DRC and eventually earning a diploma in nursing. After working in hospitals around the country, Anthony moved back home to open his own clinic on the island. “Life was good,” Anthony told us. He had a plot of land, and his clinic was doing well until one day, a group of men from another tribe attacked him.

“They beat me, and I received a lot of injuries. They aimed to kill me. By the luck of God, some boys who were playing football heard me screaming and came running… [The men] went to my clinic that night; they looted it, and when they finished looting, they burned it.”

After this incident and the increasing violence between the Tutsi and Havu tribes in the DRC, Anthony was forced to leave his home. Embarking on an arduous journey through multiple countries, he traveled by bus, trailers, and on foot before finally arriving in Nairobi, Kenya. As a refugee, he lived in precarious conditions while working part-time in various clinics. Affording rent was a constant struggle.

In 2018, Anthony applied to the Economic Mobility Pathways Pilot (EMPP), a program that helps skilled refugees immigrate to Canada. Two years later, he received a job offer through the EMPP to become a continuing care assistant at a nursing home in Nova Scotia. The EMPP was designed to help Canadian employers find qualified applicants while allowing refugees to rebuild their lives in a safe, new country. RefugePoint supports this program by identifying skilled and experienced refugees like Anthony and helps with the application process, language training, and more.

“I am very happy to go there because when I get there, I’ll be able to, in my language, they call it ‘to add a stone,’ which means for me to go there, I am also going to build Canada. I want Canada to see that I did not go there to waste time or to eat or to receive free money, but I’m going there to build, to build the country because that is where my country will be.”

Anthony is now living in Nova Scotia, working as a continuing care assistant at a nursing home, adding a stone. 

*Name changed for protection purposes.