The Women of Diversity Dinner 2017 was themed “Harmony Begins At Home”

For many, although safe in Australia, settling in a new community with family left behind, the challenges are not over.

But that Saturday night in Bankstown they danced, sang and cried to a program that included a program of poetry, music, dance and speeches.

Keynote speaker Dr Rachael Kohn spoke about the diversity of women in her own family and worldwide, and the power of faith and stories.

One of the performers, Ethiopian-Australian slam poet Ruth Fessaha, said:

Let us,
Snap the stereotypes of,
The “perfect woman,”
The “perfect leader”
Leave these fictions of
Unattainable ideals
On the bookshelf and,
Give me something real to read like,
She failed, yet she got back up
She lost everything, only to gain it back.
She struggled to cope, yet she found peace.
She had little, yet cared for others’ needs.
Let us,
Break the headlines once again,
Because great women
Are not new news.
And some of the greatest women
I know, aren’t even on the news.

SSI CEO Violet Roumeliotis said the event was a wonderful gathering of diverse cultures, with women not only sitting together to share their experiences over dinner but also sharing cultural experiences through dance and music.

“It was a happy event and we had so much fun but most importantly it acknowledged the amazing role women play in our communities,” she said.

“It was wonderful to be able to extend this opportunity of networking to many of the women we work with.”

Jewish Board of Deputies community relations and policy manager Lynda Ben-Menashe said: “The Women of Diversity isn’t just about an annual dinner — it’s about bringing women together to develop themselves and their communities for the greater good of Sydney.”

Last year the most important outcome of the dinner was that all the organisations involved sent women to participate in the Board of Deputies’ pilot “We Are All Sydney” community leadership program. Eighteen women from 15 communities graduated from the program in June and demand for a 2018 program is overwhelming.

Many of the guests at the dinner were also graduates of the Board of Deputies’ long-running Shared Table project, which since 2012 has brought together hundreds of diverse women to share food and stories and break down stereotypes and prejudices.

“This is the core business of the Board of Deputies — bringing people together in myriad forums to strengthen the fabric of our society,” said Ms Ben-Menashe.

“We eat together, we talk together, we find out what we care about together and then we fight for those things. Eventually, we stand together in coalitions like the 31-member Keep NSW Safe group to lobby our government to strengthen the law against hate speech.”

The Women of Diversity Dinner was first held in 2016 by the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies to establish a coalition of organisations, including the Australia South Sea Islanders-Port Jackson, the Ethnic Communities Council of NSW, the Muslim Women’s National Network of Australia, the Jewish Board of Deputies, the SAHELI South Asian Women’s Network, Settlement Services International, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and the Uniting Church in Australia NSW & ACT.

The second annual Iraqi Cultural Festival, running from May to September, is brought about by a group of artists, cultural leaders and volunteers from the diverse sections of the Iraqi community in Sydney.

Last month the Iraqi Australian University Graduate Forum (IAUGF) partnered with SSI’s Arts and Culture program, Ability Links and CORE Multicultural Communities to develop, run and promote an inclusive arts event in Fairfield City Museum.

Refugee musician Sinan Bayood played the oud during session breaks, and catering was provided by Onsam Catering, a business supported by SSI’s IgniteAbility Small Business Start-ups, which facilitates business creation for people with disability.

The event saw people with disabilities from the Iraqi community facilitate drawing, flower-making and etching workshops.

A panel discussion run by the workshop facilitators provided insight into the individual and collective benefits of making cultural events accessible and inclusive for all in the Iraqi community.

SSI’s Arts and Culture representative Joseph Quilter, Ability Linker Zaidoon Abdul Rassak and Disability Inclusion Officer Javier Ortiz joined the panel and discussed how art could be used as a vehicle for creating a more inclusive society and as a powerful tool for social cohesion.

The Iraqi Australian University Graduate Forum is an active agent of inclusion, aiming to promote social cohesion and mutual understanding among different Iraqi ethnic and religious groups through arts and cultural activities.

The accessible art workshops have added a layer to the forum’s valuable work, including people of different abilities as valued members of the Iraqi community.

The success of the event is a great example of a grassroots community organisation being supported by larger organisations while leading the way towards a more diverse and inclusive society and adding to the cultural fabric of a community.

Click here for a slideshow of the day.

Jawad’s kite design represents all his friends at Community Kitchen.

Jawad, who is seeking asylum in Australia, initially came to Community Kitchen as a guest but has gone on to become one of its most prolific volunteers. He helps in the kitchen, takes part in activities, and is often the last volunteer to leave, after lending a hand with the clean-up.

Jawad made an unusual kite during a kite-making workshop earlier this year. When asked about the design, he said other participants were decorating their kites with images from their home countries.

But Jawad felt conflicted. He is from an Afghan culture, was born in Pakistan and is friends with many people at Community Kitchen — friends from other backgrounds, including Tamil and Rohingya.

He wanted to be inclusive. So he said his design was “SSI”, “Because SSI includes everyone!”

The SSI Community Kitchen offers a space for guests to share a meal and experience multicultural Australia. It’s a place to have fun meeting new people, practise English, and participate in music and sporting activities.

It also provides a place for guests to interact with the broader Australian community and access specialist service providers, information and skills development.

Find out about opportunities to volunteer at Community Kitchen.

Yousef is one of five Friendship Garden participants who recently completed a short course in horticulture and will be receiving a Statement of Attainment from Padstow TAFE.

Created in partnership between SSI and Cumberland City Council, the Friendship Garden is an inclusive community project where people from all walks of life bond over their shared experience and love of gardening.

Yousef, who is seeking asylum in Australia, has been coming to the garden for two years and is now an avid contributor to the garden’s growth.

While he faces social, economic and language barriers, his confidence has soared, his English skills have improved and he has gained new skills in the garden.

Through Friendship Garden activities, SSI has helped Yousef and others reach their potential and, more importantly, pave a pathway to a better future.

SSI Community Engagement Practitioner Diana Nguyen said the Friendship Garden became a more formal classroom this year, when the horticulture short course was held on site.

“We looked at ways of filling the gap to ensure successful outcomes for the students and TAFE, particularly for people like Yousef who struggle with the language and transport. “Transport to Padstow was a barrier, so we proposed that the course to be delivered at the Friendship Garden in Auburn.”

Yousef and other gardeners in the course were supported by SSI volunteers who offered their time and skills in community languages and ESL teaching.

“We adopted a holistic approach, by utilising the skills of SSI volunteers to support the community members through the course,” Ms Nguyen said.

“As a result, they were able to attain a certificate of completion and thereby increase their motivation and confidence.”

Find out how to become a Friendship Garden volunteer.

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.