Community Hub Leader at the school, Eva Hanna, said, “It was truly a team effort with everyone donning their gloves to make a contribution.

“It’s so rewarding to see the community working together and even more rewarding to see the garden beds fully planted. We look forward to harvesting the produce in the near future and to promoting a healthy way of life for the children and their families.”

The whole school community — the principal, staff, parents, P&C and students — helped bring the garden to fruition but the project would not have been possible without the support of Nick Katsoulis from Yates and Narelle Hunt from Bunnings Mount Druitt.

Both local businesses donated products and sent a team of experts to assist with the planting of the garden beds.

“Taking part in a community garden from the very beginning and watching your hard work flourish into edible, sustainable, take-home fruit and veg brings new interest and adventure to school life,” Ms Hanna said.

Community Hubs is a national program that supports migrant and refugee parents and children as they navigate the education system. It builds parenting and family skills and resources, and promotes links between families and local services and networks.

SSSI is the designated Support Agency for Community Hubs in Sydney, where Hubs are located across five local government areas.

Read Write and Spell is a not-for-profit organisation that provides free literacy, numeracy and basic computer skills services to adults, with a primary focus on refugees and people seeking asylum.

Operating from a centre in Ultimo, qualified adult literacy teachers gather five days a week to hold classes with students who either cannot afford English literacy classes, are not eligible for classes due to their visa status or have very low levels of English.

One regular attendee is Nasrin*, a young mother who has been supported by SSI’s Status Resolution Support Services program since she left her native country of Iran to seek asylum in Australia.

“I needed help to help me with my kids and their homework. When I go outside, I need to talk and make relationships with other people. To do that, I need to speak English. Now I can help my son do homework and I can talk to his teacher as well. Before, I couldn’t do that. I used to hide from them. Now I can talk and feel comfortable,” she said.

“My dream is to go to university. In my country, I couldn’t go to university but I’d like to go to TAFE and then university.”

With the help of volunteer teachers, Nasrin is now hoping to enrol in a TAFE course that will enable her to improve her English enough to gain acceptance into a nursing qualification.

Like Nasrin, Yasmin* is also seeking asylum in Australia and comes along to class each week with her five-month-old baby, with the goal of improving her English enough to find work.

“I live in Australia. All the people here speak English. I don’t like it when they speak to me and I don’t understand,” she said. “I’ve been to other English classes that taught me how to say things like, How are you?’. Coming here has helped me to learn so much more about things like grammar.”

Headteacher Tess Shannon said class sizes were small to accommodate students with very low-level English literacy or no English at all.

“We do a lot of one-on-one teaching for those students who require special attention. These students eventually join the larger groups when they are competent and confident enough to do so,” she said.

“We also provide extra English language support to people seeking asylum who are studying for the HSC or completing TAFE certificates.”

* Names have been changed.

Ms Szubanski is one of Australia’s most loved acting talents, having featured in international films such as Babe: Pig in the City, Happy Feet, and The Crocodile Hunter, and starring on Australian television in hit shows such Fast Forward and Kath & Kim.

Ms Szubanski’s father was a refugee from Poland who fought in the resistance during the Second World War. He made his way to Britain, where his children were born, before coming to Australia.

“I am an example of what can happen when you let refugees in the door,” said Ms Szubanski, twice rated Australia’s most recognised and best-liked television personality.

Her countless awards include seven Logies, three Australian Writers’ Guild Awards, two People’s Choice Awards and an AFI Award for Best Actress.

Her hugely successful first book, Reckoning — heartbreaking, joyous, traumatic, intimate and revelatory — won the 2016 NSW Premier’s Literary Award for Nonfiction, and “Book of the Year” and “Biography of the Year” at the Australian Book Industry Awards.

The SSI Mosaic Gala will be a ticketed, fundraising, black-tie gala dinner event with an international/multicultural theme that will showcase the diverse cultures in Australia.

There will be a tantalising degustation menu featuring cuisines from various cultures and entertainment will be provided by groups presenting traditional dance and musical performances.

For more information and ticketing visit the Mosaic Gala website.

In response to the humanitarian crisis in Syria and Iraq, Australia has accepted an additional one-off intake of 12,000 refugees, while also increasing its annual humanitarian intake. We’re one of more than 30 countries that, together, resettle a combined total of close to 200,000 refugees through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) each year.

The two issues — refugee resettlement and the global humanitarian crisis — were the dual focus of UNHCR consultations that SSI attended in Geneva last month.

The first – the Annual Tripartite Consultations on Resettlement — invited a number of international non-government organisations like SSI to take part in high-level discussions between UNHCR and delegations from countries around the world. The second — the UNHCR Annual Consultations with Non-Government Organisations — gave all NGOs that work with refugees the opportunity to discuss the issues facing them in a global forum.

The consultations provided a snapshot of the state of humanitarian responses to the refugee crisis, while also drilling down into some of the issues organisations like SSI face on the ground.

A common theme at both consultations was the ways in which private businesses and civil society are working together to address the challenges facing refugees. One private business, Airbnb, presented a platform the accommodation-sharing company has launched offering 16,000 free or heavily discounted properties to refugees in the USA.

This is one of many examples of how the private sector engages in issues affecting refugees, such as rescue at sea, alternatives to detention and resettlement. The private sector has responded to the global humanitarian crisis with compassion and innovation, something we at SSI have seen played out in partnerships with companies such as Google and Allianz Australia.

In the wake of this unprecedented movement of people, one of the countries to take a leading role in welcoming refugees has been Canada. It has cemented this position with everything from the Prime Minister personally greeting airport arrivals to the country’s settlement of 30,000 Syrian refugees in a four-month period.

Following an invitation from the Canadian government, an SSI delegation, led by SSI CEO Violet Roumeliotis, headed to Vancouver in June to present at the National Settlement Council about outcomes and innovation in refugee resettlement.

One of the subjects covered was SSI’s unique Ignite Small Business Start-ups initiative — a business incubator for budding refugee entrepreneurs that, among a sample of just 35 participants, has saved Australia an estimated $800,000 annually in Centrelink payments. In total, Ignite has helped to establish more than 65 refugee businesses in three years.

While the visit to Canada was a chance for SSI to share innovations like Ignite, it was also an opportunity to learn about what is working well in Canada’s refugee resettlement.

One area of particular interest was the private sponsorship of refugees, which has resulted in around 200,000 refugees being settled in the country since the late 1970s.

Interestingly, there is some evidence that among the cohort of refugees affected by the Syrian conflict, those who arrived in Canada via private sponsorship have achieved higher employment in the short term than those who entered via the government program. This was thought to be partly due to the social capital privately sponsored refugees received from their sponsor and their sponsor’s connections.

Australia has its own version of this program, the Community Support Program (CSP), where business and community sponsors can bring in up to 1,000 refugees a year. SSI will be taking the lessons learned in Canada and applying them in a joint policy paper on the CSP we’re developing with the Refugee Council of Australia.

This knowledge exchange is just one of the ways in which SSI benefits from international visits. The discussions, consultations and meetings held during the trips to UNHCR and Canada are what gives SSI an international lens for the work we do with refugees. They’re opportunities to reflect on what we’re doing well, learn from our peers and, importantly, keep striving to deliver quality, innovative services for vulnerable communities.

Newly arrived refugee women enjoyed a Sydney tour and harbour cruise.

The women, who live in different suburbs in the Canterbury Bankstown LGA, travelled by train to Wynyard Station and took the Wynyard Walk connecting Sydney CBD to Barangaroo. After coffee on the waterside they boarded a cruiser that took them on an informative tour around the harbour, the Opera House, Barangaroo Headland and other landmarks.

The tour incorporated a lunch buffet and socially enjoyable activities such as singing, dancing and interacting with each other and with the cruiser’s staff.

The cruise concluded with a walking tour to some significant sites in the Sydney CBD: the Town Hall, St Mary’s Cathedral, St Andrew’s Cathedral, St James Anglican Church, Circular Quay, the Rocks and some shops.

Feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with the women reporting they have not had such a beautiful day since the war broke out in Syria.

SRSS Team Leader Nils Bethke and Case Manager Michelle Naike were head chefs for the day, each bringing along a lentil recipe they’d grown up with.

“It all started with a conversation between team members in the kitchen at work,” said Mr Bethke. “The topic of lentils came up and we all exchanged our cultural recipes. There was an Afghan recipe, my European one, a South American way of cooking lentils. It sounded like they would all be quite different.”

The cooks decided to bring their recipes along to SSI’s Community Kitchen, a fortnightly social day where refugees and people seeking asylum practise English, take part in recreational activities, and share a multicultural meal with volunteers from the Australian community.

Mr Bethke’s contribution was a central European lentil dish that he had while growing up in Germany.

“It’s basically a combination of my mother’s recipe and my mother-in-law’s recipe. I never realised lentils were used in so many parts of the world. I am not sure how and when they came to Germany because they don’t grow there, but they are widely used there too,” he said.

At home, Ms Naike usually cooks food from a mix of other cultures, but for Community Kitchen she drew on her Afghan roots to cook a Middle Eastern-style lentil stew.

“I don’t know where I learned the recipe. If you’re brought up with people cooking around you, you pay attention to that and remember the dishes,” she said.

Dall — Middle Eastern lentil stew

Two onions, thinly sliced

One bag of fried onions

One small piece of ginger

Cube of vegetable stock

Pinch of turmeric

Pinch of cumin

Pinch of garam masala

Pinch of coriander powder

Tbsp tomato paste

400g lentils, soaked overnight

Olive oil, to taste

1. Place the onions and garlic in a pot with a splash of oil. Put on a lid and simmer until soft.
2. Add dried onion, turmeric, cumin, garam masala and coriander powder, along with a cube of vegetable stock and the tomato paste.
3. Put on a lid and simmer for 10 minutes.
4. Add the lentils and enough water to cover by a few centimetres.
5. Stir the lentils regularly and add oil until the lentils soften. This should take 15-20 minutes. The lentils should be sticky and firm when served, with a similar texture to risotto.
6. Serve with basmati rice and Afghan bread.

Linsensuppe — Central European lentil stew*

400g lentils, soaked overnight

Two carrots, diced

Two potatoes, diced

One brown onion, sliced

Handful of fresh parsley

Splash balsamic vinegar

One vegetable stock cube

Pinch of pepper

1. Add the onions and carrots to a large soup pot and sauté until brown.
2. Add the lentils, stock cube, and potato.
3. Cover and simmer until all ingredients are soft, stirring occasionally.
4. Add parsley, pepper and vinegar to taste

*Usually this dish is prepared with bacon, sausages or other meat. Out of respect for other cultures and customs, it was decided to cook a vegetarian version at Community Kitchen.

Canadian government agency, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, invited Ms Roumeliotis to present at the National Settlement Council meeting in Vancouver in July on the theme ‘outcomes and innovation’.

Ms Roumeliotis discussed SSI’s unique Ignite Small Business Start-ups program – a small business incubator for fledgling refugee entrepreneurs, before sharing perspectives on the Australian approach to settlement and integration.

Following the forum, SSI representatives, along with Paul Power, the CEO of the Refugee Council of Australia, participated in over 20 meetings and site visits in Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa, with a focus on reviewing private sponsorship and settlement support for refugees.

Private sponsorship of refugees (PSR) has been part of the Canadian resettlement landscape since the Indochinese refugee crisis in the late 1970s and is estimated to have resettled about 200,000 refugees since that time. Groups involved in private sponsorship raise the equivalent of one year of social security income which is held in a trust account and paid to the sponsored refugees to meet settlement and other expenses when they arrive in Canada. These groups are responsible for assisting refugees in the first 12 months after arrival with orientation and other activities, including helping them find affordable housing, employment and education.

When considering the cohort of refugees who have arrived in Canada impacted by the Syrian Conflict, there is some evidence that privately sponsored refugees achieve higher employment in the short term when compared to refugees who enter Canada under the government-assisted program.

These initial strong settlement outcomes are thought to be in part due to a social capital transfer with most privately sponsored refugees getting significant in-kind support from the private sponsor and their own connections they may have in Canada such as other family members.

Government-assisted refugees on the other hand are very vulnerable refugees when compared with privately sponsored refugees. This was an area that the SSI team was keen to explore along with the idea that moving quickly into employment by taking ‘any’ job on arrival may impact refugees in the long term as they did not take sufficient time to retrain and reskill for the Canadian labour market.

Australia has the Community Support Program, where up to 1,000 places each year have been allocated within the existing Refugee and Humanitarian Program for business and community sponsors to bring refugees to Australia. Learnings from the Canadian visit will inform SSI’s view on the strengths and weaknesses of the Australian Community Support Program and how best the organisation can be involved in finding durable solutions for refugees. Look out for a joint SSI and RCOA policy paper that will draw together the lessons learned.

By SSI Executive Officer Katrina Grech

Originally from Iran, Sarah came to Australia in 2013 with her husband, Daniel, and two young children. On arrival, the family was assisted by SSI’s Status Resolution Support Services program, which provides support to people who are living in Australia on temporary visas while their status as a refugee is assessed.

“We were new to Australia, our English was limited and it was very hard to find a job. But my SSI case manager was amazing. She would say to me, ‘You’re a social worker. You’re educated. You’re experienced. You can find a job,” Sarah said.

“I didn’t think I could because my English wasn’t good and I didn’t know how to look for work here. But she believed in me and encouraged me. She helped me to create a CV and taught me how to apply for a job. Little by little, I got more confident.”

When the family first arrived in Australia, Sarah did not have work rights or access to English classes, so would spend much of her time taking her young daughter to playgroups.

“Each day, I took my daughter to a playgroup in a different suburb. My daughter was very shy and her English was limited, but together, we joined in with the other parents and children and started learning more English and other skills,” she said.

“It was the first time I’d been to a playgroup because we don’t have them in Iran. We really enjoyed being with the other parents and children engaged together in play, drawing and other activities. It’s really useful for the children, and I was interested in that. After one year of doing that, I started volunteering at Granville Multicultural Community Centre playgroup.”

Sarah’s case manager also introduced her to SSI’s Playtime — a multicultural playgroup where families with young children can meet other families and make contact with community organisations. An initiative of SSI’s Community Engagement program, Playtime is, in a number of locations, run in partnership with Playgroup NSW. Playtime is provided by Playgroup NSW with funds from the Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation to develop a playgroup program suitable for refugee families.

After learning of Sarah’s extensive experience as a social worker, Playgroup NSW employed her to facilitate two of the Playtime groups.

“Now that I’ve had some work experience, I feel more confident about my ability to get a full-time job and return to social work. Before I thought I could never find a job in Australia or learn to speak English. It was hard for me. But now things have improved. I’m part of this community,” Sarah said.

Three days a week, Sarah also heads to TAFE where she is undertaking an English course that will give her the skills to extend her education.

“I enjoy studying. I want to improve my English and then apply for university to do a Master’s in social work to update my education and learn more about my field,” she said.

Next month, delegates from within the settlement sector, and beyond, will gather again to discuss how they are using more innovative and creative ways to enhance the support these families receive.

SSI CEO Violet Roumeliotis recalled there was a strong sense of optimism and enthusiasm among delegates for continued action to improve service responses for recently arrived families.

“Many of the lessons and recommendations from that day have informed our thinking and practices on how SSI can work more effectively and collaboratively to enhance settlement and support services for refugee and migrant families,” Ms Roumeliotis said.

Post-conference evaluation indicated an extremely high level of satisfaction across all aspects of the symposium, and feedback included “really good to see so many services from the sector coming together; would love to see this event continue into the future” and a suggested improvement was “make it a two-day symposium”.

In light of this, SSI is pleased to be hosting another Cultural Shift event, this time a two-day conference that extends the theme of settlement further, to also discuss the concept of ‘belonging’.

“I’m really looking forward to exploring with my colleagues in the sector how best to foster a sense of belonging that is so important to people’s health and wellbeing, and how we can create better settlement conditions and opportunities for families.

“I’m also curious to learn more about the wonderful work that is happening in the sector during the concurrent and plenary sessions. There are some fantastic speakers and presenters scheduled,” Ms Roumeliotis said.

For more information about the conference program and to register to attend, please visit the Cultural Shift website.

The New Beginnings Festival for Refugee Week — the first instalment of SSI’s 2017 New Beginnings: Refugee Arts & Culture Festival — attracted 600 people to a series of creative events that highlighted the artistic talents of exiled artists and craftspeople.

SSI Arts & Culture Coordinator Carolina Triana, who produced the festival, said it was an opportunity for Sydneysiders to come together and learn about the cultural heritage and vibrant artistry of some of Australia’s newest community members.

“Being a ‘refugee’ is not the singularly defining aspect of a person’s identity,” she said. “Our aim was to facilitate creative exchanges between refugee and non-refugee communities. Getting to know someone through their art makes us focus on their creativity and potential — labels are no longer relevant.”

The festival launched on June 21 at 107 in Redfern with the opening of the Singular/Plural art exhibition. Curated by Denise Thwaites, the exhibition featured work from newly arrived artists alongside their established peers Garry Trinh, Alex Seton, Aroha Groves and Lindy Lee.

The fun continued three days later with a sold-out traditional Persian tea ceremony hosted by Ladan Haghighat. After watching Ms Haghighat prepare her aromatic blend, guests sampled the tea and learned how to make their own, using a mixture of herbs and spices.

The event was organised by the Community Kouzina Project as part of a collaboration with the New Beginnings Festival for Refugee Week that also included an installation and a special series of recipes and stories from people of refugee background created in the lead-up to the festival.

The New Beginnings Festival for Refugee Week also strayed into the world of film, giving refugee filmmakers an opportunity to tell their stories in their own voices at the Sydney Stories screening night.

The short films were developed during a six-week community filmmaking workshop facilitated by arts company CuriousWorks. The filmmakers produced works on everything from gender equality and marriage to family reunions and adapting to life in Australia.

On July 1, as the New Beginnings festivities drew to a close, Sydneysiders got their chance to meet some of the artists exhibiting in Singular/Plural during two creative workshops. A master weaver from Afghanistan, Sayd Mahmod taught a unique tapestry making technique, while Sameer Dakhil gave a demonstration of the intricate engraving work that his family has undertaken in Iraq for more than six hundred years.

Missed out on the fun? The New Beginnings: Refugee Arts & Culture Festival will resume on Saturday, November 18 with a one-day festival in Darling Harbour. Click here for more information, or follow New Beginnings on Instagram for updates.

The festival has been a free public celebration of the diverse and rich creativity and talents of refugees, migrants and people seeking asylum since it started in 2015. Click here to find out how you can support this important event.