Buffey Cassidy and Nathalie Maione have a big mission. Every Wednesday night, the two women furnish the homes of newly-landed refugee families. Cassidy and Maione, who both run day cares out of their homes and together head Helping With Furniture, originally met 11 years ago when they started attending the same playgroup. “We have so much in common,” says Cassidy. She says their husbands often joke that the two are always on the phone with each other.
“We are never short of conversation,” she laughs. The women also became Catholics together and joined the outreach group at their church, Annunciation of the Lord Parish. It was through the outreach group that the idea for Helping With Furniture developed, says Cassidy.
She says the leaders of the outreach group have helped refugees for several years. “They were helping a family and they needed a vehicle big enough to help move some furniture,” she says. “Nathalie has a 15-seater van [...] and said yes she would [help].” When Maione agreed to help move furniture once a month Cassidy joined her. “It only took that one night of us going out together and then being so excited about [it]. The families we help are amazing. Look what they’ve come from. We just got hooked and decided to continue,” she says.
Cassidy also says they started seeing valuable furniture being left on the curb to be taken to landfills. “This is such a simple concept, when you think that people want to get rid of their furniture to the point of putting it out to the curb, and we know people that need it,” says Cassidy. And that is how Helping With Furniture got started.
Since then, these women have busied themselves even more: running their day cares, organizing furniture moves every Wednesday night, meeting with lawyers to get Helping With Furniture incorporated and working to get charitable status with the federal government. Maione and Cassidy credit their organization to constant communication and flexibility.
Maione says they spend at least four hours each day, four days a week simply organizing a move. “We are consumed by it,” adds Cassidy.
“It’s our passion.” Maione and Cassidy have also contacted the media to help with recruitment and now have between 20 and 25 active volunteers. “What Helping With Furniture has brought to our attention is all these wonderful people we’ve been able to meet,” says Cassidy. “Look at when we all get together what we can accomplish.”
Maione adds: “It’s unbelievable how many people are volunteers in Ottawa and doing amazing things. To be able to meet them is a real honour.” Both women agree that the main struggle they face is the waiting lists, which Cassidy describes as “a constant burden on our shoulders.” “There are the waiting lists on both sides,” she explains. “[There is] the waiting list of the families who are waiting for us to help, and then there is the waiting list of people who want to donate.”
When asked to think of the best part of Helping With Furniture, Cassidy and Maione speak, with passion and laughter, of the many families they have helped and the fun they have had during their moves. Cassidy says her favourite part of Helping With Furniture is the families she meets. Maione speaks of phone calls she gets from families after they have settled in.
She says she is always happy to hear how well the families they helped are now doing. Cassidy speaks of a time when the people who gave donations also sent along a loaf of bread they had made with a note that said: “Welcome to Canada.” “This was from the donor to the family,
and we are bringing it to them,” says Cassidy. “The symbolism was there, definitely,” adds Maione.
According to Cassidy and Maione, Helping with Furniture has helped more than 145 families in about two years. With their second annual fundraiser, From One Heart To Another, coming up April 4, which is also Refugee Rights Day, Cassidy and Maione say they still have many aspirations for Helping With Furniture.
Cassidy says she wants to find a warehouse or open space where furniture donations can be viewed and personally picked out by the refugee families. She also says she also hopes to have offices to take calls from donors and refugee families. “We dream big and we are going to do this,” she says.
Photo by JENNIE CAMPBELL
Nathalie Malone and Buffey Cassidy love moving day. While the idea of schlepping furniture and boxes up and down flights of stairs might fill you with dread, the good friends have transformed it into a mission of love. Every week they help refugees arriving in Ottawa find their footing by furnishing their empty new homes.
