Refugee project wins Diverse Australia funding

South Sydney Community Aid Multicultural Neighbourhood Centre has received a $50,000 grant in the Federal Government’s Diverse Australia program.

The money will go towards the centre’s Refugee African Muslim Youth project, aimed at helping the youth integrate into Australian society and giving them a voice in the community.

Centre Manager Jhan Leach said there were several specific challenges facing youth in the African Muslim refugee community.

“The project is focused on looking at some of those major challenges – the unemployment, difficulty in gaining English language skills, understanding of the Australian work culture and overcoming discrimination in the workplace,” she said.

“What we want to do is engage them in projects that embrace them … African Muslim refugee youth are a really important group to be engaging with and embracing in our community.”

She said another aim was educating the broader community.

“We had a White Australia policy until 1973 … the idea of the influx of African communities into Australia is something that is still new to the country,” she said.

“We need to put more structures in place … to look at [these] youth, look at what they’re bringing, look at and embrace their religion, embrace their culture and see how we can get a broader understanding in the community.”

Ms Leach said that many of the youth had come to Australia from terrible war-torn environments.

“Sometimes they’ve been in refugee camps for an extended period of time,” she said.

“Often, there’s no father … it’s just the women and children because the father has been executed in wars in those countries … so what they’ve experienced before coming to Australia is fairly harsh.”

Ms Leach described several facets to the project’s approach.

“We’re going to be looking at art, culture and dance … creative workshops with the youth that look at what they love doing,” she said.

“There’s [already] a Sierra Leone dancing group of young women, the boys are into the hip hop – we’re going to be setting up art groups that look at the culture, coming to Australia, how they are perceiving … and their embracing of the Australian culture. “

The project would also look at issues with integration and job-seeking, she said.

“We want to deal with some specific issues … [like] providing information and knowledge about relevant legal issues to the target group such as Australian employment law and workplace discrimination,” she said.

“A majority of the target group are lacking really sound English language skills, so we want to target some specific areas with that, also we’d like to look at some job training workshops to establish and assist in resume writing, application writing and interview techniques.

“We’re [also] going to provide some information sessions that look at a set approach to understand Australian employers and what they’re looking for, for secure employment.”

The centre would also set up a publication through for the youth to express themselves and the issues that were relevant to them, Ms Leach said.

“The youth will take ownership of the project as it goes forward,” she said.

“[They will] come up with the name of the publication and put forward the topics that they feel are really important.”

Another aspect would be a youth leader development and mentoring program directed at developing skills for teamwork, self-confidence, leadership and public speaking, Ms Leach said.

She said the Centre was going into discussions with the City of Sydney for a matching grant.

“We’d really love them involved in the project and we hope that they’ll come in with us,” she said.

“We’ll also to be talking to Housing Australia about whether they’d like to be part of this project as well.”