The Building Citizenship Program welcomes and celebrates more than 1,500 new citizens each year who choose to officially call Canada home. The program relies on a national network of volunteers to organize special community citizenship ceremonies with compelling roundtable discussions. Alongside partner Citizenship and Immigration Canada, ICC volunteers passionately work to create an event that celebrates new citizens while connecting them to their community. Ceremonies are hosted in welcoming public spaces (often cultural attractions that belong to our CAP program), and roundtable hosts are volunteers from the community – from neighbours to business professionals and city leaders. The roundtable discussions are at the heart of the ICC's community citizenship ceremonies. It's where new citizens, their guests and community members share stories, collectively reflecting on what it means to be Canadian..
Held at Vivo For Healthier Generations, Rabail Qasir, CIES Drop-In ESL Volunteer Tutor and CIES CEO Dr. Sally Zhao, attended the citizenship ceremony as volunteer roundtable hosts on behalf of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship. At the round table discussion were former CIES LINC student, Elham, her husband Ahmed, a former CIES Computer Training Program client, along with their son and daughter. After finishing studying at CIES, Elham has since become a Director at the Calgary Childcare Centre and Ahmed has successfully completed his Petroleum Engineering studies at SAIT. At the conclusion of the informal roundtable discussion, the official citizenship ceremony took place and the day's events were concluded by Aboriginal circle dancing and reception.
CIES was very proud to be part of the ceremony and to celebrate the momentus and happy day with new Canadians. To see CIES very own Rabail Qasir talk about her own story of immigration and her time here at CIES working with newcomers to Canada click below.
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