Hope Ineza Foundation works in Edmonton with families who have just arrived in Canada and with people living on the street, and runs education programs for refugee children overseas.
Two local programsNewcomer settlement and street outreach
Founded 2022Nakivale settlement, Uganda
Who we are
Started by people who arrived here themselves
The volunteer team on an outreach round.
Hope Ineza Foundation is a non-profit based in Edmonton, Alberta. We help newcomer families find their footing in Canada, take food and supplies to people without a home, and fund education for refugee children overseas.
The work started in 2022 in Nakivale refugee settlement in Uganda, and the people who began it know both sides of the journey: the settlement and the arrival. That is why the Canadian work looks the way it does. Nobody explains how a Canadian winter works, or how the washing machine in your new apartment works, unless somebody sits down and shows you.
We hold non-profit documentation in Alberta, and remain a registered non-profit in Uganda for our international programs.
Most of our work happens in Edmonton. The programs in Uganda continue because that is where the foundation began.
Newcomer settlement support
Walking new arrivals through the first months in Canada: the paperwork, the winter, the transit system, and the ordinary domestic things nobody thinks to explain.
A family lands in Edmonton with documents, a suitcase and very little else. What follows is not one big problem but a hundred small ones, and almost none of them are explained anywhere.
We sit with new arrivals and work through them: how the buses and the fare system work, what the school needs before a child can start, where to shop and what things should cost, what to wear when it is minus thirty.
And the domestic details that sound trivial until you are facing them alone: how to run the washing machine and dryer, the stove and oven, the dishwasher, the thermostat. Knowing how your own kitchen works is part of feeling at home in it.
Volunteers go out in Hope Ineza Foundation shirts with water, food and warm clothing, and hand them to people directly rather than waiting for anyone to come and ask.
The supplies matter. So does the rest of it: stopping, using someone’s name, asking how the week has been, and being recognisable enough that they look for the shirts next time.
Hope Ineza Foundation was established in 2022 in Nakivale refugee settlement in south western Uganda. Those programs continue alongside the work in Canada.
Education in the settlements
Helping refugee children reintegrate into Ugandan schools in the Nakivale and Kyaka II settlements, with training and orientation reaching five settlements in total. School fees are $30 per term, and sponsorship goes to orphans and the children most at risk of dropping out.
A school in Mbarara
A planned seven-classroom primary and six-classroom secondary school for refugee children, open to the surrounding community. Costed line by line at $398,000, with individual items available to fund separately.
Much of our support comes from the Rwandan, Burundian and Congolese diaspora in Edmonton and across Canada and the United States, families who have made the journey the people we serve are beginning.
We are a faith-motivated organization. Our founder, Rev. Pastor Jean Paul Mutabazi, brings a word of hope alongside the food, the clothing and the school fees. Our programs and assistance are open to everyone we serve, without regard to belief.
In Edmonton it buys water, food and warm clothing for someone living on the street, or a kettle and a set of pans for a family setting up their first Canadian home. Through our international programs, $30 covers a school term for a child in a Ugandan refugee settlement.
