Women’s refugee service needed

By Sarah Schwager
A FORUM in Springvale last week highlighted the need for a women’s refugee service in the southeast.
More than 115 women from different nationalities attended the Victorian Immigrant and Refugee Women’s Coalition (VIRWC) forum to help raise awareness about the issues and needs of immigrant and refugee women.
VIRWC chairperson Melba Marginson said this was the first time a conference like this had been held.
Ms Marginson said many organisations had got involved, including the Cities of Greater Dandenong, Casey and Whitehorse, AMES, Mission Australia and Wellspring.
Ms Marginson said the VIRWC was looking at setting up a migrant women’s regional organisation in Dandenong and the forum aimed to determine the needs of these women.
“There are a range of women (who come to Australia), some with qualifications but a lot more do not have the qualifications and are battling with the issue of literacy and English and a whole range of other issues, such as juggling family life and childcare costs,” she said.
“There are ones that have qualifications, such as Jesmin (Nahar) who has her PhD in sericulture, but have accents. Discrimination is going to work against them.
“It’s so hard. It’s easier to get men into jobs than women, that’s why we need to do a lot more lobbying.”
Five women spoke at the forum, Tatjana Krneta, Dr Jesmin Nahar, Ritu Dhar, Malak Sukkar and Mary Nyabong.
Tatjana Krneta arrived in Australia in 1998 from Croatia as a Serbian refugee and now works with the Serbian Welfare Association of Victoria.
“Some of us had to change our career when we came to Australia,” Ms Krneta said.
Dr Nahar, who comes from Bangladesh, said they had talked to the women about being discriminated against and the problems they faced getting jobs.
“We tried to inspire them and console them,” she said.
Ms Sukkar comes from Lebanon and arrived in Australia as a nurse and after gaining further qualifications, is now a projects business development manager at St Vincent’s Hospital.
“We were trying to get them to learn from our experiences,” she said.
“The key messages were persistence, selfconfidence and belief in your own potential.
“We taught them about reaching for the stars and treating every difficulty as a challenge.”
Ms Marginson said the VIRWC planned to run another forum in the western suburbs and then in the north, but first they would need to find funding.