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Speakout
Bulletin
Update
from IWSA membership:
Asian
Women at Work organizer, Angela Zhang (also the IWSA Deputy Secretary)
Angela Zhang, community educator and organiser of the Asian Women at Work, and Deputy Secretary of the IWSA Management Committee participated at Prime Minister Rudd's community consultation on the impact of the global financial crisis. She attended the consultation on 7th May in Bankstown. The PM had asked the question: how can we work together in dealing with unemployment brought about by the global financial crisis? PM Rudd had written on the board the suggestions from the participants and narrowed it to 7 proposals. Angela presented the case of the textile, clothing and footwear workers, many are immigrant women and a large number of them have lost their jobs. She told the PM that these immigrant women want to learn new skills and get employment in the aged care industry. On item 6 of the list of the proposals, the PM wrote the Asian Women at Work's request for migrant women workers re-training for aged care work. Group activity for women with young children and those who are caring for their grandchildren: IWSA's Project - CALD Women's Aquatic Physical Fitness and Community Belonging
In January 2008 the Immigrant Women's Speakout Association (IWSA) received funding from Parramatta Leagues Club to run a CALD Women's Aquatic Physical Fitness and Community Belonging Project through the CDSE scheme of Parramatta City Council. This project aims to improve and maintain the well-being of women and enhance their sense of community belonging by involving them in social aquatic fitness activities. It will also provide the opportunity for refugee and migrant women to have fun and to socialise with other women from other backgrounds. The project was launched on the 11th of February 2009 by Ms. Donna Mosford, the Community Grants Officer from the Parramatta City Council at the Ruth Everuss Aquatic Centre. The launch was attended by almost 40 adult and young women from a range of ethnic groups. Ms. Jane Brock, the IWSA Executive Officer, welcomed the participants and briefly spoke about the services provided by the IWSA. Afterwards, the IWSA Chairperson Ms. Lara Palombo addressed the participants with brief information about the project and its importance in women's life. IWSA provided orientation on safety and health issues during the swimming lessons.
All participants were given a pair of goggles and then instructors were introduced to them. Ms. Maureen Summirthayes and Ms. Carole Brown, two professional instructors from the Sports and Recreational Department, gave orientation about swimming, as well as the rules and regulations of the Swimming Pool. The women were provided with registration forms and time table of the sessions. At the end of the launch all participants enjoyed the refreshment served by the IWSA and many of them have had catch-up conversations with other women and also get to know other participants. IWSA
at the 2009 Hundreds of women and men from a wide range of organisations gathered on 7th March 2009 at Sydney Town Hall Square, for the 101 years celebration of the International Women's Day (IWD). The Immigrant Women's Speakout Association, once again has been honoured to speak at the IWD rally.
Lara
Palombo, the IWSA Chairperson, on her speech, presented the inequalities
that most immigrant and refugee women experience in their workplaces.
Lara also pointed to the situation of many Aboriginal women who
continue to face great hardship, especially on lack of employment
opportunities. She also called on the government to respond to the
current economic situation by changing the Social Security Legislation
by supporting newly arrived migrant and refugee women and their
families. Lara's speech was warmly received and had been highly commended by the participants. After inspiring speeches at the Town Hall square, we marched to Hyde Park. It has always been an exciting part of the IWD celebration. Groups of women from various organisations and various cultural backgrounds marched with great enthusiasm.
There
have been cultural performances at Hyde Park where community organisations
and government agencies gathered after the march. IWSA also had
a stall at Hyde Park and provided information to other organisations
and exchanged ideas on future cooperation. We agreed that we must
work collectively in advancing women's voice and raise community
awareness about women's needs, especially those of newly-arrived
migrant women, promoting women's rights, working on issues relating
to climate change and to campaign on eradicating poverty. Cooperation
with migrant women in
Aotearoa (New Zealand): IWSA participated at the International Women's Day Conference in Aotearoa
Rukshana Sarwar represented IWSA at the International Women's Day Conference held in Aotearoa (New Zealand). Rukshana made a presentation on IWSA services and advocacy work at the local, national and international level. She also shared the core content of IWSA policy submissions on immigrant and refugee women issues and recommendations over the last five years that were presented to all levels of government. Rukshana focused on IWSA's collaboration with newly established bodies such as NIRWA (Network of Immigrant and Refugee Women of Australia), the IMA (International Migrants' Alliance) and AMMORE (Action Network for Marriage Migrants’ Rights and Empowerment). She highlighted the role of NIRWA as an independent immigrant and refugee women's organisation that advocates for NESB women's issues within the framework of CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women). The conference participants agreed to bring home to their organisations the result of the discussions and for IWSA to explore potential cooperation between immigrant and refugee women’s organizations in Australia and Aotearoa to come up with an NGO report on CEDAW implementation. The conference was held on 6-8 March 2009 and was hosted by the the Shakti Community Council Inc. in Auckland, Aotearoa (New Zealand). IWSA congratulated and thanked Farida Sultana, the Conference Coordinator in organising this gathering and for having provided assistance to the IWSA representative. Participation at national policy conference: IWSA participated at the first Refugee and Immigrant Women National Conference On 6-7 March 2009 in Perth, Western Australia the first Refugee and Immigrant Women's Conference was held. The conference was convened and organized by the Federation of Communities Council of Australia and the Women's Committee of the Ethnic Communities Council of Western Australia. The theme of the conference was "Setting the Social Inclusion Agenda". There were over 200 participants that came all over Australia. CALD women activists, policy advisers, community leaders, service providers and research people attended. One of the conference recommendations pointed to have multiculturalism as one of the core principles in the social inclusion agenda of the government.
Jane Brock, IWSA Executive Officer presented a paper on "Revisiting the Family Violence Provisions (FVP) of the Migration Regulations" at one of the conference concurrent workshops. She emphasized the need to review the implementation of the changes to the regulations, including the role of the independent expert tasked to re-assess the genuineness of the applicant's experience of family violence. As
a whole this historic first Refugee and Immigrant Women National
Conference achieved the key outcomes set-out by the conference organizers.
One of the conference recommendations pointed to multiculturalism as one of the core principles in the social inclusion agenda of the government. The IWSA Management Committee and staff congratulate Ms Voula Messimeri AM, Chairperson of the Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Councils of Australia (FECCA) and all of FECCA leadership, the Ethnic Communities Council of Western Australia (ECCWA)and Ms Nadia Loncar, NIRWA National Council member and also the ECCWA Senior Policy Officer and Project Coordinator, for holding the first and very successful refugee and immigrant women’s conference. Resourcing
the DV NESB Network: NESB Domestic Violence Network meeting discussed "Staying Home Leaving Violence" program The NESB DV Network held meeting its first meeting on the 17th March at Auburn Migrant Resource Centre. The network is being convened and resourced by IWSA. The guest speaker in the March meeting was Judy Tokin who is acting senior project officer for the "Staying Home Leaving Violence" (SHLV) program of the NSW Government. Around 30 community workers, students, academic professional, government and non- government agencies attended the meeting. Judy presented a brief background on SHLV and the evaluation report on the two pilot projects. Staying Home Leaving Violence in Eastern Sydney is one of two pilots in NSW. The program in Eastern Sydney is managed by NSW Department of Housing with funding from the NSW Department of Community Services. Due to the success of the pilot projects, the SHLV program will expand to 16 new programs in July 2011. Six new program sites will open in July 2009 and additional ten in July 2010. Judy explained that SHLV will complement existing services. It means that this will bring new expertise to the NSW domestic and family violence service sector, both government and non- government. The program will operate in collaboration and coordination with existing services and the non-government sector will be consulted on the expansion of the model across NSW. One of the questions asked by one of the meeting participants was: How much security is provided for the woman and her children if she choosed to remain home? Judy replied that in order to provide security measures, a woman must feel confident and want to remain at home. If a woman fears constantly for her life then the project is not quite suitable for her and she will be classified as a "high level of care needed'. The choice is completely up to the woman. Once she decides to remain at home, a care plan will be implemented. The level of security varies from case to case. Immigrant Women's Speakout Association and all the network participants appreciated the information that was presented by Judy. Everyone hopes that the SHLV program would enable empowerment of women and have this as one of the means in stopping violence in their lives. Participation at national policy and advocacy forum: IWSA co-sponsored the NIRWA's Workshop - NESB Women's Housing and Homelessness: Challenges for Immigrant and Refugee Women
The Immigrant Women's Speakout Association (IWSA), has been one of the co-sponsors of the workshop that was organized by NIRWA (Network of Immigrant and Refugee Women of Australia. The national workshop was held on 28th March 2009 in Sydney. The workshop programme commenced with a stage play titled "Where is My Home?" and was performed by the women's theatre group and who are also service recipients of NESH (Non-English Speaking Housing for Women). The brilliant performance presented an impressively moving play about their experience of being homeless in Australia. The live drama also depicted the journey of single mothers with their children on how they have found temporary accommodation at NESH. IWSA and NIRWA congratulated and thanked Mira Mitrovic, NESH Coordinator, also an IWSA Management Committee member and all the women and their children who performed in the play. The theme of the workshop was "Challenges for immigrant and refugee women on the issues of housing and homelessness". The participants have had small group discussions and came up with collective insights on various issues on housing and homelessness and with corresponding recommendations to prevent homelessness and to provide timely and culturally appropriate response to the issues presented. Vivi Germanos-Koutsounadis, NIRWA's chairperson opened and closed the workshop. Vivi spoke about NIRWA's objectives and role and emphasized the need of immigrant and refugee women to have a voice. This is what NIRWA did on the workshop - it provided a voice for immigrant and refugee women on the issue of homelessness and housing. The IWSA chairperson, Lara Palombo had also participated and she called on participants to recommend to the various government bodies to collect and provide disaggregated data on NESB women's housing and homelessness. The other co-sponsors were Homelessness Australia, Women's Services Network (WESNET) and YWCA Australia. The speakers were IWSA's Executive Officer, Jane Brock that focused on housing as a human right. Tasneen Fatimah, from NIRWA Young women's Leadership Project and Mentoring Program spoke about New Arrivals and Housing. Other speakers were Aileen Solowiej from Homelessness Australia and Meseret Abebe from Footscray Youth Housing Group (Victoria)-Youth Homelessness, presented the strategies they used in addressing the issues of housing and homelessness. The final presentation was presented by Julie Oberin and Pauline Woodbridge from WESNET. They focused on Domestic Violence and Homelessness. Their presentation's core message was the critical link between domestic and family violence and women's homelessness, especially with women from CALD backgrounds. NIRWA had completed the report on the workshop that contained the issues and recommendations. They will present and discuss the report with the federal Office for Women. Training community workers in regional and rural areas: IWSA assisted in running seminar on Family Violence and Migration in Bathurst Through the initiative of Kathleen Gallagher, Health Education Worker of the Stalking Project at the Central West Women's Health Centre Inc, in Bathurst, IWSA ran the Family Violence and Migration Seminar on 2 April 2009. Monique van Toor of the Bathurst Neighbourhood Centre organized the preparations and the neighbourhood centre co-hosted the seminar. Family Violence Provisions. The seminar covered the following topics: overview: on family violence provisions (FVP), proof of family violence: judicial non-judicial and suggestions on Supporting NESB women in accessing FVP and we ran though some success stories. We hope to hold similar seminars in other regional and rural areas in the near future. IWSA highly commends the hard work being done on family violence by the Central West Women's Health Centre, Bathurst Neighbourhood Centre and all the seminar participants UPCOMING EVENTS 2009 Training in Family Violence The
Family Violence Provisions (FVP) in Immigration Law Cross
Cultural Domestic Violence Training (CCDV) Dates
for CCDV training Cost
for each training: $55 (inc GST) The training is open to all community workers and community leaders who are/will/should be working with migrant and refugee women. A basic understanding of family and domestic violence is a requirement to participate in the training. Early registration with payment two weeks prior to the training date is essential.
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IWSA on 9635 8022 for more informations. |
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Immigrant Women's Speakout Association of NSW
PO Box 9031, HARRIS PARK NSW 2150
Ph: (02) 9635 8022 Fax: (02) 9635 8176
www.speakout.org.au