by Sahar Foladi
Greater Dandenong is listed as the top eight most welcoming city for refugees in Australia, according to new research.
The ‘Settlement Cities’ report by Edmund Rice Centre takes a place-based approach to refugee settlement, focusing on the local government areas (LGA) where refugees most frequently settle in Australia
“Australia’s settlement cities help refugees to quickly feel at home and find community in Australia,” the report’s authors say.
“Refugees who have this community support find it helps them settle quickly and relatively easily in their new home.”
One of the ‘settlement cities’ Greater Dandenong consists of residents of over 150 nationalities with a population of approximately 169,000 people, with more than half of whom were born overseas.
Each year, Greater Dandenong welcomes around 2,700 newly arrived people, many of which are refugees and people seeking asylum.
The report says the multicultural character of such cities is inclusive to newcomers, reducing the feeling of isolation.
The city’s multiculturalism is also evident through its colourful businesses in the area, built on hardworking migrants sweat. There are Afghan shops, restaurants down Thomas Street, Indian Bazaar on Foster St which also consists of Little India, the Zimbabwean African shop on Lonsdale St and much more.
In relation to that, the report found that the settlement cities are thriving mostly due to its vibrant and supportive ethnic communities refugees have created in each area.
Greater Dandenong is also made up of a lot of organisations to help refugees and migrants to not only settle in but also be supported throughout whenever they need it.
One of such organisation is the Bakhtar Community Organisation the first Afghan Australian secular organisation based in Clyde North, which opened their office in Dandenong, the heart of the Afghan community in 2021.
By the end of 2022, the organisation opened their new distribution centre in Hallam.
Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC) not only advocates for refugees and asylum seeker rights, but they also support them in the heart of Dandenong with services such as food banks to employment pathways.
However, it also stated those facilities need more support and funding to facilitate better settlement outcomes.
According to the new report, community associations receive little to no funding from any level of government and rely entirely on the voluntary works of the refugee communities.
The report recognised the hard work of community organisations and has deemed it both unfair and inefficient.
It stresses the need for settlement expenditure is expanded to include support specifically for community associations but must be done so to track the impact of the funding as well.
It is labelled as the ‘key recommendation’ and other suggestions from the report to be ‘dependant,’ on it, furthering its importance.
Greater Dandenong Council has taken action to help build local migrants which in turn were able to build the Dandenong it is now.
Some of the council’s iniatitives include grant programs to refugee communities, annual celebrations of Refugee Week and Cultural Diversity Week, chairing the Local Government Mayoral Taskforce Supporting People Seeking Asylum, establishing the Multicultural and People Seeking Asylum Advisory Committee, and supporting youth inclusion projects and multicultural playgroups.
Mayor Eden Foster said the council was “proud to be a refugee welcome zone and is committed to creating an inviting and inclusive city”.
“We acknowledge that the refugee settlement process can be a difficult path for many to experience.
“Applications for asylum get stuck in a broken system. This overly slow approach prevents individuals and families gaining the stability that refugee status provides.
“The result is vulnerable people living on the edge for years, without access to critical support service such as Centrelink, Medicare, public housing, education, mental health and food.”
AMES Australia chief executive Cath Scarth said the report showed the importance of harnessing communities in supporting newcomers to Australia to settle.
“Securing employment and housing, like any other Australians, are priorities for newly arrived refugees.
“And we can see from the research that having welcoming cities and communities can help deliver these aspirations.”
Dandenong resident and Afghan refugee Hamid Arfany says he feels welcome and supported in his new community.
“We have everything we need in Dandenong.
“There are other members of our community living nearby, we can buy the food and other things we are familiar with – and the local council has programs that support us.
“We feel comfortable because there are many people from many places across the world. We are not different, in Dandenong being form somewhere else in normal.”
