JOANA: the community services fair in Welland

When you arrive in Niagara, the trouble is not that nothing exists. It is that you do not know it exists. Where to learn English, where to enrol the children in a French school, who to talk to about a diploma earned somewhere else, where to find a doctor who understands your language.

On Friday 2 October 2026, JOANA was built to answer exactly that, and SOFIFRAN had a table there.

A day to learn which door to knock on

JOANA stands for Journée d’orientation et d’accueil des nouveaux arrivants, the orientation and welcome day for newcomers. The Centre de santé communautaire Hamilton/Niagara organizes it, with support from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, and brings the organizations that serve the region’s francophones into one room.

From ten in the morning to two in the afternoon, in the community hall on East Main Street, the tables stood side by side: Collège Boréal, Conseil scolaire Viamonde, CERF Niagara, the Centre de santé communautaire, SOFIFRAN, and others. A hot lunch in the middle, and all the time anyone needed to ask their questions.

What a well-stocked table does

On ours: the service leaflets, the organization’s magazines, the employment support program, and mugs to take home. Behind it, the banner that says what we try to do every day: Together, let us build a vibrant, caring and proud community.

A day like this is not measured in leaflets handed out. It is measured in conversations. A woman stops, explains her situation quietly, and leaves with a phone number and the name of someone to talk to. Sometimes that is enough to change the six months that follow.

Why SOFIFRAN was there

Because this is exactly our work. The women and families the organization supports have been through it: the first week in Canada, the paperwork, finding a school, housing, the language. Being in that room means being findable.

And because no organization manages it alone. A newcomer needs a doctor, a school, training and someone to listen, and that is four different organizations. A day like this puts them all in the same room, and the person is the one who gains.

Thank you

Thank you to the Centre de santé communautaire Hamilton/Niagara for organizing and hosting, to the organizations who came, and to everyone who turned up with questions that Friday.

If you have just arrived in Niagara and do not know where to start, write to us. That is what we are here for.

Your voice, our strength, our future.