Every year, people come to Canada as immigrants, refugees, and refugee claimants, bringing skills, experience, resilience, and dreams for a better future.
Canada has been built by newcomers. But too often, their potential is not fully seen or used. Canada is sitting on gold, while skilled people are underemployed, overlooked, or blocked by systems that are too complex to navigate.
Instead of receiving coordinated support that helps them move toward stability, many newcomers are left to navigate fragmented services on their own. They move from one organization to another, repeat their stories again and again, wait for support, and still do not receive the help they truly need.
Among all newcomers, refugees and refugee claimants often face the greatest barriers. Many arrive after displacement, trauma, and loss, while also facing legal uncertainty, reduced supports, limited service access, language barriers, housing stress, employment challenges, and isolation.
They are expected to rebuild their lives while navigating one of the most confusing systems in the country, often alone.
This is where Impakt steps in.
Our Model
Our approach is the Integrated Newcomer Services (INS) model, developed by the Impakt team and informed by evidence, research, and best practices in integrated care. INS brings together services that already exist but are often scattered across the system, including employment, mental health, community connection, and housing support. It creates a connected ecosystem of care through for refugees, by refugees navigation, peer-to-peer support, and trusted relationships. It is personalized, relationship-based, and focused on each person’s journey to stability, so newcomers do not have to navigate fragmented services alone. Learn More.
Relationships are the starting point, not paperwork.
Relationships come first.
Lived experience is leadership
Nothing about us without us
No wrong door. No one walks alone.
We don’t send people across systems, we walk with them through it.
We learn, adapt, and improve continuously
We learn together
