“Fridays for Future” protest started by Greta Thunberg.

Greta used her acceptance speech to urge people to recognise the link between climate change and mass migration, famine and war. In listening to Greta speak, I was struck by one particular comment: “I was very angry and sad because of everything that was happening, and I just decided that I was going to do something about it.”

Eight years ago, Greta did not even know what climate change was. Now she is one of the world’s leading advocates on this ecological crisis, after launching a school strike that went viral around the world.

Greta’s work is emblematic of a trend Deloitte highlighted last year in research indicating a growing dissatisfaction with political solutions to complex issues such as immigration and global warming.

We can all learn a lot from Greta’s fearlessness in tackling a crisis creating severe socioecological effects for people who are least equipped to withstand them.

Whether you’re in government, civil society, business — or a school student like Greta — we can all take positive steps to address social justice issues.

Social impact is our shared right and responsibility. At SSI, we work with some amazing values-driven companies that generate benefits that extend beyond their customer base to the broader community.

Through partnerships with these community minded corporate and academic institutes, we create real change in our communities.

One such example is SSI’s Ignite Small Business Start-ups initiative, which supports refugee entrepreneurs to establish or expand a small business. To date, Ignite has supported 130 businesses that now employ 68 other people. Over 60 per cent of our Ignite entrepreneurs are now generating enough income to be economically independent.

This program is entirely funded by SSI and our partners. It epitomises the incredible social change that is possible when the not-for-profit, corporate and academic sectors come together with the wider community.

An entertaining and engaging way organisations and individuals support Ignite is by sponsoring and attending SSI’s Mosaic Gala. This event raises critical funds for both Ignite and our scholarships that help refugees to overcome financial barriers to education. This year, we’re particularly pleased to have award-winning author, artist and comedian Anh Do joining us as a keynote speaker. Click here to get involved.

It is only through cooperation from all corners of our society that we can solve social challenges. Like Greta, we have to be fearless. We can’t just notice the problems in our community — we have to act.

Hub members enjoying the day’s festivities.

The close-knit network of new arrivals and Australian-born Muslim women served food to elders and community members, at the NAIDOC celebration of Baaybain Aboriginal Corporation at Mt Druitt.

Community Hubs is a national program that supports migrant and refugee parents and children as they navigate the education system. The Hub at Colyton Public School is one of the Community Hubs supported by SSI in five local government areas of Sydney.

The women from the Colyton Hub saw the NAIDOC celebration as an opportunity to show their respect to the traditional custodians of the land and learn more about Aboriginal culture.

“I wanted to know more about this culture and come to the festival and share our love because Indigenous people have given me so much respect and they deserve so much respect back,” said Coylton Hub member Ansar 

The women arrived early to set up a stand where they could present the food they had spent days carefully preparing. Biryani, soups, goulash, homemade bread and gorgeous cakes decorated with the Aboriginal flag were all out of the kindness of their hearts.

The food was served to the elders first, and anything left was given to the wider community. Although they believed they would only have enough to feed the Aunts and Uncles, the women outdid themselves, feeding almost 400 people.

“The food just grew in the pot and we were able to feed the whole community,” said Yesim, who offered small cups of rich Turkish coffee to the crowd.

Most of the women were introduced to Aboriginal culture through their SSI Hub leader Lisa Gobo, a proud Darkinjung woman who takes a unique approach in applying a First Nations cultural approach to healing and community connection.

Through yarning circles and deep listening, Lisa and women from the Community Hub have created a safe community space for CALD, refugee and Indigenous women to gather and be heard.

Najla, who spent the day serving elders and community members with food she had cooked, arrived in Australia just two months earlier.  She said she found a deep connection with the Indigenous culture and the women at Colyton Community Hub.

“I really enjoy Aboriginal culture because I like the people and how welcoming they are to their land. They welcome me to their land and now I feel like it is my land too. You give me the strength and it is an honour,” she said.

A live painting workshop led by Ghanaian artist Emmanuel Asante kept the little ones busy at the New Beginnings Winter Festival. Photo credits: Damon AMB.

The Winter Festival was the first instalment of the 2019 New Beginnings Festival and showcased artworks produced ahead of the event at a series of cross-generational and cross-cultural public workshops.

The workshops were facilitated by well-established artists and filmmakers from a refugee background, including Majid Rabet, Ali Al Azeez, Mohammed Alanezi and Elham Marvi.

SSI Arts and Culture Producer Raphael Brasil said the success of the creative workshops reflected SSI’s ongoing commitment to support established artists from a refugee and migrant background.

The workshops provided a platform for established artists of refugee background to transfer their skills and knowledge to a broader audience, he said.

“As newcomers adapt to a new social and cultural environment, the workshops provide opportunities for cross-cultural dialogue, highlighting the concept of ‘place’ and connection to Sydney’s inner west.

“The initiative also allowed local communities to learn something new, all while making a social impact.”

The full-day public program of activities was led by newly arrived artists and featured live performances, including the finale of the inaugural Homelands — an interstate music tour that was produced by SSI in partnership with BEMAC (QLD) and celebrated cultural diversity through the promotion of unity, harmony and inclusiveness.

Multicultural food stalls, including local businesses from Ignite® Small Business Start-ups, IgniteAbility® and Sydney’s well-known Addison Road Street Food Markets, set up shop at the Festival and attracted eager crowds who lined up for a culinary feast.

The Festival was produced by SSI in close collaboration with the Community Refugee Welcome Centre and Inner West Council.

Festival highlights included a mesmerising performance with the soaring vocals and rhythmic beats of world-renowned Uyghur musician Shohrat Tursun, and the fluent delivery of spoken word poet Roje Ndayambaje, who left audiences in a reflective mood.

At the Screening Hub, festivalgoers experienced a series of short films created from the cultural perspective of individuals with disability from CALD backgrounds. The films sought to raise awareness, reduce stigma and build aspiration within communities, promoting an inclusive environment.

The second instalment of the annual SSI New Beginnings Festival will be hosted in Sydney’s iconic Darling Harbour on Saturday, November 16, 2019.

The Festival promotes the talents, vitality and diversity that people from refugee and migrant backgrounds bring to Australia’s creative sector.

The outdoor festival will feature live music, dance performances, kids’ workshops and food and market stalls with an array of international cuisines and cultural handicrafts.

The Bower is an environmental non-for-profit repair and reuse organisation that aims to reducing the amount of goods sent to landfill. 

Their range of services and programs are based on their ethos of reusing and repairing items, with the organisation currently having agreements to collect, repair and rehome unwanted household products from over 20 Sydney metropolitan councils.

One of their initiatives, the House to Home program, was launched in 2016 in partnership with SSI, and aims to assist newly arrived refugees and people seeking asylum. Since its inception, the initiative has provided over 200 families with free household goods. 

Items provided to new arrivals are delivered to their homes by the Bower, and include saved and repaired furniture, white goods, kitchenalia and homewares, worth an average of $245 per family. 

Louise Grace who runs the House to Home project explained that the simple act of welcoming new arrivals to choose their own furniture and homewares to set up their new housing, and make it their home, can go some way to restoring someone’s hope for the future.

“Being able to provide, free of charge, clean, comfortable furniture to somebody starting out in a new country is a great feeling,” she said.

This partnership between experts in the revitalisation of preloved household goods and those dedicated to settlement services has been successful in creating more sustainable communities.

More information on The Bower here. 

Refugee advocate Arash Bordbar has been elected Chair of the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network (APRRN).

APRRN is an open and growing network of more than 340 civil society organisations and individuals from 28 countries committed to advancing the rights of refugees in the Asia Pacific.

As a longstanding member, and a partner since 2017, SSI has supported APRRN’s activities in key areas, including joint advocacy for refugee rights at national, regional and international levels.

Other activities between the affiliated organisations include knowledge sharing and capacity strengthening addressing responses to key protection challenges focused on issues around legal aid, advocacy, refugee law, mental health, gender issues, statelessness, and alternatives to detention.

Mr Bordbar was an integral part of the SSI Youth Collective before receiving the Young Australian Human Rights Award in 2016 for his work with refugee youth. His advocacy work has strong connections with his own lived experience.

“My advocacy started more than 10 years ago, the moment my family and I stepped foot in Malaysia after escaping to safety from Iran,” Mr Bordbar said.

“We found ourselves in a foreign land with no friends and no direction. The process with UNHCR was long and hard, and that was when I started my advocacy to help refugees, like myself, to find meaning in this world.”

SSI CEO Violet Roumeliotis said achievements like Mr Bordbar’s amplified refugee voices.

“These are the refugee lived experiences that truly illustrate what it means to walk in their shoes, and Arash is a great example of a young person who has referred to his own lived experience to advocate for others,” Ms Roumeliotis said.

“We are excited to continue work with Arash in his new appointment as Chair and to continue our partnership with the APRRN secretariat.”

Mr Bordbar fled his home in Iran at the age of 16 and arrived in Malaysia registering as a refugee with UNHCR in Kuala Lumpur. He spent five years there, where he completed his secondary education online, before being resettled in Australia in May 2015.

“As a refugee in Malaysia during that time, we had no access to education and employment since we were considered illegal immigrants,” he said.

After being resettled in Australia, Mr Bordbar enrolled into university and, in 2016, was nominated to be the Australian delegate to the UNHCR-led Global Refugee Youth Consultation in Geneva.

His involvement led to the establishment of the Global Youth Advisory Council, a mechanism ensuring that youth voices are taken into consideration during the UNHCR decision-making process.

Mr Bordbar has been working with APRRN since 2016 and now sees an opportunity not only to build a strong network but also to help refugees find their voices during moments that matter the most.

“I believe that inclusivity should always be part of the conversations and planning, as we should make sure that every human being has an equal opportunity to be heard and represented,” said Mr Bordbar.

“As the chair of APRRN, I would personally like to make sure that we continue to fight for the rights of refugees and provide support as needed to make sure that people are represented equally and fairly. Together we can make it happen.”

We’re living in a world where every minute 25 people are forced to flee their homes. New figures from UNHCR show that by the end of 2018, 70.8 million people globally were displaced from their homes – representing the highest level since the UN refugee agency began 70 years ago.

Finding a way to humanely and practically respond to this flow of human traffic is quickly becoming a key challenge of our times.

One of the ways we can do this is to share best practice examples with our peers in other countries, something I recently did in a presentation on refugee entrepreneurship at the Diversity in Organisations, Communities and Nations Conference in Greece.

SSI’s Ignite® Small Business Start-ups initiative has a proven, transplantable model that can benefit populations in different demographics and countries, like Canada where this initiative is currently being rolled out to refugee and migrant entrepreneurs with great success.

I was honoured to have the chance to share ideas and knowledge SSI has gained while running Ignite®. While I was in Greece, I also had the opportunity to visit a refugee camp and meet with refugees, staff, volunteers and representatives from the Greek government and the International Organisation for Migration.

The camp itself sits in an abandoned seaside resort in Myrsini in western Greece, where huts have been restored to accommodate 300 Syrian families. They have access to WiFi, informal Greek classes, local schools or onsite education, and vouchers to buy fresh produce for their meals.

Seeing the camp made me feel very proud of my Greek heritage; however, the organisers were very frank in describing this camp as a best practice example. The situation is more dire on the islands of Chios – where my own family is from – and Lesbos, where international organisations like Oxfam have condemned the inhumane conditions of refugee camps.

I was heartened, however, to see how welcoming the local community was to refugees. The biggest issue for them is that Greece is seen as an interim country on the way to Italy, Germany or France. The Greek government is increasingly encouraging people to become citizens and is working to progress integration policies and processes.

The Diversity Conference itself was themed around border crossing narratives and learning from the refugee experience and examined the concept of diversity as a positive aspect of a global world and a globalised society. It recognised that diversity is in many ways not only reflective of our present world order but also of the diversity in communities and government policy, such as racism, conflict, discrimination and inequity.

SSI is also an active participant in international forums hosted by UNHCR, where we share lessons from Australian resettlement and elevate the voices and experiences of people who have come to our country as refugees.

Refugee voice was a central theme for a meeting of the UNHCR’s Annual Tripartite Consultations on Resettlement (ATCR) Working Group on Resettlement earlier this year. During the meeting, it was wonderful to see our international peers speak about how motivated and inspired they have been by the powerful work the Refugee Council of Australia is doing to elevate refugee voices.

One of the prevailing themes of these discussions was that ‘refugee’ is a situation and not something you are born into. Being a refugee is not an endless notion. It is a fleeting time that reflects one aspect of a multifaceted identity.

To that end, a Refugee Advisory Group has been formed to invite views and opinions from resettled refugees on all aspects of integration into local communities, which is fed on to ATCR and UNHCR consultations to help shape the future of resettlement.

Self-representation is always a priority during SSI’s international advocacy work as this enables people from refugee backgrounds to advocate for their communities.

At a time when the UN has called for responsibility-sharing to support refugees around the world, I am proud to say that SSI has taken the initiative to engage in international dialogue, participate in the development of the Global Compact on Refugees, collaborate with our peers in other countries and advocate for innovative solutions to refugee and migration challenges.

SSI volunteer Fabian Foo at Community Kitchen

SSI’s volunteer program builds on SSI’s ability to engage the broader community in its mission to support newcomers and other vulnerable Australians to prosper.

It also has benefits for the volunteers themselves.

Fabian Foo works as a manager in the NSW public service sector. Like many of SSI’s volunteers, he manages his volunteering around his work commitments.

Mr Foo, an SSI Community Kitchen and Welcome2Sydney volunteer, says he has found it very inspiring to meet like-minded people who are so passionate about their causes and their work.

“My volunteering experience has reiterated what I have always believed about people: that wherever we come from in the world and whatever language we speak and even what god we worship (if any) — in spite of all that, we are still more similar than we are different.

“To have been reminded of this, through my volunteering at SSI, has been a gift.”

Each year, over 300 volunteers collectively give over 10,500 hours of their time to support SSI clients and programs.

Working together, those community members provide additional support for programs and activities that might not otherwise be provided by SSI.

They also provide a fresh perspective and contribute to building social inclusion, community participation and cohesion.

Learn more about volunteering opportunities at SSI here.

Since the recent federal election, friends, neighbours, politicians and commentators have been telling me that many Australians have become inward looking and self-focused — that we have abandoned our pursuit of the common good in favour personal comfort and security: ‘what’s in it for me’.

Recent research shows we are not alone; individualism is on the rise globally. Counterintuitively, socioeconomic development is a predictor of whether individualistic practices and values will increase in a country over time. This means that, as people’s comfort and affluence increases, they become more concerned with things they suspect may infringe upon that quality of life.

Is this really true of Australia? Even if the commentators are right, is this the way it has to be?

We live in a country with a high quality of life and a stable economy, where we can speak our minds without risking vilification or violence. Being born in this country is not something we have earned or achieved. We won the birth lottery. 

My own parents came to Australia as migrants from post-WWII Greece. As a child, I remember visiting my dad’s village on the island of Chios and being bewildered by the lack of running water and electricity. As an adult, all I can do is appreciate the foresight that saw my parents leave behind their homeland to seek a better life for my sisters and me.

Not everyone has the opportunity my parents did. More than 68 million people globally have been displaced because of war or persecution. Yet, each year, only around 103,000 of those people have hope of resettling elsewhere.

What I regularly hear from the people we resettle in Australia is relief, hope and gratitude — gratitude for the safety our country offers and for the opportunity to build a life in which they can realise their full potential.

On the other hand, what I heard from many Australian-born voters in the lead up to the recent election is that they feel they have become a repressed ‘other’ in their own country. This is perhaps unsurprising given comments from politicians on both sides of the aisle blaming new Australians for everything from congestion to youth unemployment.

So what does this have to do with Refugee Week? Cultural celebrations help us to come together. They help to break down barriers between established and emerging communities and challenge our misconceptions about one another. During Refugee Week, share a meal, listen to a story, attend an event — get curious about the things that make us different.

This week is a chance for us to remember that we live in a society, not an economy — to open our hearts and minds to the idea that our differences are a strength, not a weakness. If we cannot sit respectfully around the table with people whose experiences differ from our own, how can we hope to find common cause on our approach to important issues?

As Australians, we need to be aspirational about the kind of country we want to be, rather than just protecting the kind of country we have now. We have different views and opinions, but we also have a lot in common. We share values, a love for our land, and a responsibility to see our country grow. It is on each of us to look for ways to raise the bar and resume our pursuit of the common good. 

Welcome2Sydney participants at the 2019 Sydney Writers’ Festival.

Welcome2Sydney is an SSI program that encourages newcomers to explore and develop a sense of belonging in their new home. Hosted by volunteer ambassadors, welcome activities include social, cultural and recreational excursions that match individual interests.

The Sydney Writers’ Festival ticketing team kindly reserved allocated seating for SSI at the Bankstown Poetry Slam: Women of the Word on May 4. The group of 20 included staff from the volunteers support team and Community Kitchen.

SSI’s HSP housing team provided a minivan to transport the young women and men to and from South Western Sydney.

The common thread among all participants was a love for literature and desire to socialise with other like-minded young adults.

They were able to share information and knowledge about their aspirations to study and contribute to the canon of great literature. They discussed the best universities and opportunities available, shared a meal and sang songs. They spoke about women who had inspired them and future plans for their next activity together.

One participant said the thing she loved the most about arriving in Sydney was that she was treated like a real human being. “I was treated with dignity,” she said, “I was treated as someone who had interests and aspirations — that there was more to me than being a refugee.”

Welcome2Sydney Project Officer Paula Ben David said that was a common experience for Welcome2Sydney participants, ambassadors and community support assistants.

“They are living and breathing proof of how great our communities are and can be,” she said. “Especially when people step up to welcome new arrivals, share their interests and celebrate an appreciation of belonging together.”

Cafe Patisserie owner, Enora (second from left) with members of the Ezidi community who cooked on the night.

Enora and Nathan, owners of the cafe, began to give croissants to the family in return. 

To make the Ezidi Food Night a reality, community member and valued friend of SSI, Sue Vile, worked with SSI’s Community Engagement Coordinator, Sam Airs, to organise the night where members of the wider community could come together and share a traditional Ezidi meal cooked by the eleven Ezidi community members.  

Sixty tickets were offered but, in a stunning turnout, over 70 people arrived, hungry to sample this traditional cuisine born and perfected over centuries in the mountain ranges of Northern Iraq. All profits from the evening were fed back into the Ezidi community to explore more great projects and initiatives in the future   

Café owner Nathan said, “Food is a great way to bridge cultures; it’s a shared language.”

SSI’s Sam Airs also called it “an incredible night of welcome where the local and newcomer community came together for a beautiful evening that was so much more than a dinner”.

To date, almost 300 Ezidis have arrived in Armidale and have been working excitedly to build their new lives in the community.