Humble helper

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This article was published 05/01/2019 (2684 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

With a professional background in manufacturing, it seems logical that Michel Aziza calmly and quietly co-engineered the country’s only multi-faith organization sponsoring Yazidi refugees.

“It’s understanding the environment, organizing things in the right sequence and trying to be as effective as one can be,” says the mechanical engineer and former vice-president of operations for New Flyer Industries of his leadership style.

“No engineer likes to waste time.”

Aziza chairs Operation Ezra, an interfaith group formed to respond to the crisis facing Yazidis in Iraq. Since 2015, the community-based group has sponsored and settled 55 Yazidi refugees in Winnipeg, and assisted dozens more.

He receives the Lieutenant-Governor’s Award for the Advancement of Inter-religious Understanding at a ceremony at Government House on Monday, Jan. 7.

Artists Manju Lodha and Ray Dirks received the award jointly in 2018. Previous recipients include former police chief Devon Clunis, counsellor and columnist Karen Toole, and Rabbi Neal Rose and his wife, Carol Rose.

Although Aziza leads both the 10-member working committee and the volunteer committee, he is reluctant to claim credit for the success of the group, which has raised $700,000 since its inception, says Lorne Weiss, a member of the working committee and president of Congregation Shaarey Zedek.

“He’s an individual who has no ego,” the Winnipeg real estate agent says by telephone from Florida.

“Most people, when they build something, they take ownership of it.”

Instead, Aziza opened the door to broad range of people across Winnipeg to help resettle Yazidis, Weiss says. In addition to Jewish community groups and synagogues, partners in Operation Ezra include Christian churches and organizations, university student groups, public schools, retail stores and businesses.

“Everyone felt they were participating as equal partners,” Weiss says about the extensive reach of the organization across the city.

“We took ownership as a broad community.”

Adds the Salvation Army’s Ray Harris: “Michel simply does what needs to be done. He gives wonderful leadership, but he will never seek the centre of the stage.”

Aziza agreed to be nominated for the award for the attention it would draw to Operation Ezra and its continuing need for funds and volunteers to expand its work of resettling Yazidi refugees.

“When it comes to rescuing and saving lives, there is no end. You can always do more,” he says, adding thousands of Yazidis in Turkish refugee camps have reached out to Operation Ezra through social media or text messages.

“At the end of day, we’ve sponsored 55 people. It’s a drop in the bucket.”

Now 57 and a new grandfather, this is the first volunteer gig for the Moroccan-born, Harvard-educated Aziza, who took early retirement from the business world and feels compelled by his Jewish faith to make a difference. He dedicates full-time hours to make connections, raise funds, organize logistics, lobby governments and even store furniture in his southwest Winnipeg home.

“I’m observant and I want to help people in need,” says Aziza, who moved in Winnipeg in 2002, later spent four years in Israel and returned to this city in 2012.

That desire to help Yazidis has broadened his perspective on interfaith work and that of the 60 or so Jewish, Christian and Yazidi volunteers.

“Operation Ezra is unique in the sense it’s reached out across multiple communities and multiple faiths,” says Aziza, who grew up in France and moved to Toronto in 1980.

“This has really allowed people to do what they felt in their heart for the Yazidi people they knew nothing about.”

Some days the needs are overwhelming, with an onslaught of stories of death in refugee camps and children being sold in slave markets, settlement worker Nafiya Naso says about the scope of the humanitarian crisis facing Yazidis.

“I just want to curl up and not leave the house, but I then think about all the amazing individuals, faith groups, organizations, businesses, municipal, provincial and federal governments, who have come together under the leadership of Michel (Aziza) and work to save the Yazidi survivors of genocide,” says Naso, who came to Canada 18 years ago with her parents and siblings.

Although he is being honoured next week, Aziza says the work of Operation Ezra has no end in sight. Plans for 2019 include connecting with more faith groups to sponsor Yazidi families, assist government-sponsored refugees, help families in Winnipeg reunite with members still in camps, and assist the growth and development of the Yazidi community in Winnipeg.

And if those plans results in more connections and relationships between people of different faiths, that benefits everyone in Winnipeg, he says.

“Why (this effort) helped with religious understanding is because we found a common goal in helping Yazidis.”

brenda@suderman.com

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