SfC In The News
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April 1996
Donation to help immigrants adjust
'Lucky' man says thanks with aid to skills agency
By John Spears
Toronto Star Business Reporter
 
Ratna Omdivar, Skills for Change and Sam Ghazouli, Brandselite International Corp.While Sam Ghazouli was building a successful career in Canada, his mother, Elaine, was quick to remind him he had been lucky.
 
"Whenever I told her I had achieved something, or got a promotion, she always used to say: "Don't forget those who cannot make it.' "
 
He didn't.  Now, Ghazouli has donated $75,000 in his mother's memory to Skills for Change, an agency on St. Clair Ave. W. that help ease immigrants and refugees into the Canadian work force.
 
The donation has become the cornerstone of a fund that has enabled Skills for Change to buy and renovate its building, which serves more than 4,500 clients a year.
 
Ghazouli presented the money at the agency's annual New Pioneers Awards dinner last night.
 
Elaine Ghazouli knew about life's struggles.  An Egyptian, her husband died when shoe was 29, leaving her with five children.
 
Her son Sam eventually made his way to Europe, then Canada as a pharmacist for a big pharmaceutical and cosmetics firm.
 
In 1986, he formed his own firm, Brandselite International Corp. in Richmond Hill.  It supplies perfume, jewelry and liquor to duty-free shops across North America.
 
His mother followed Ghazouli to Canada in 1964, at the age of 50.  She promptly enrolled in a social work course, and worked for years at a home for unwed mothers in Edmonton.  She died in 1991.
 
Ghazouli said his mother deeply appreciated the life she found in Canada -- its health and social services and it opportunities for women.
 
"She just fell in love with what Canada represented to her and all of us."
 
When Sam Ghazouli founded his own company, he put 10 per cent of the shares in the Elaine Ghazouli Chartible Foundation.  He dsiced money from the foundation should be used to help immigrant adjust to Canadian life.
 
Ghazouli himself won a New Pioneers Award for entrepreneurship in 1995 -- and was astonished at how closely the work of Skills for Change matched the foundation's goals.
 
"Skills for Change was almost made to order," he said yesterday in the agency's building, where renovations continue.  "It was uncanny.  The fit was just tremendous."
``Skills for Change was almost made to order.  It was uncanny.  The fit was just tremendous.'
- Sam Ghazouli
Skills for Change gives immigrants and refugees language training, introduces them to standard office systems and gives them a taste of Canadian workplace culture.
 
Skills for Change is about half way to its current $750,000 fund-raising goal, says executive director Ratna Omidvar.
 
Some long-time corporate supporters have been generous.  But the agency is also getting more donations from successful immigrants like Ghazouli -- including some who have benefited from the agency's services in the past.
 
Now, with a fulltime staff of 30, it receives about 30 per cent of its funding from government.
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