You are both donor and volunteer: Your role is to buy items for a newly arrived family to include in a basket, and deliver the basket to the family in person.

When you sign up, you can indicate the size of the family you'd like to be matched with. In general, expect to spend around $25 per person in the family; a basket for a single parent would cost about $50, while a basket for a two-parent family with 3 children can cost $125.

You'll be offering a basket to a refugee claimant family who has moved into their first apartment in Montreal within the previous 3 months. This will be a family that the Welcome Collective team has identified as being in a precarious situation, such as a single-parent family, a family with several young children or a pregnant mother.

We ask that you mainly provide essential items that we all need, but that don't fit into the very tight budget that these families must manage: non-perishable food items, cleaning supplies, personal care items, household items, seasonal items, and items for children. You’ll find a longer list of suggested items in the downloadable guide on this page.

When a family is assigned to you, Welcome Collective will provide you with their contact information. You'll contact the family by text, e-mail, or phone call to introduce yourself and arrange a time for delivery.

Part of this program’s purpose is to offer a more personal welcome to newcomer families, and delivery is an important part of that. We also seek to multiply our collective impact by having volunteers use their own vehicles or public transit for deliveries. We ask you to deliver the items yourself in order to offer a personal welcome to the family and to allow the Welcome Collective delivery vehicle to focus on large item delivery.