people. Receiving no support from the
federal government, the volunteers ap-
proached the Bishop of Calgary, who gave
them $20,000. The government, in turn,
matched this amount. With a tidy sum of
$40,000, the founders launched what is
known today as the Calgary Catholic Im-
migration Society.
“We were created because communi-
ty saw a need,” said Fariborz Birjandian,
CCIS’s CEO for the past 22 years. “We are
here to solve a social problem.”
As with many charitable groups, a continu-
ous source of funding was a problem in
its early days, which was why CCIS took
Margaret Chisholm Resettlement Center
DECEMBER 2016
H
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