Volunteers needed for this Friday's Bunning BBQ
Amy and her travels
Chloe in Brasil
Who Knew?
Speakers Night
So
Solstice Swim Sunday Morning 7th July
Care Garden Working Bee washed out
A Rotary Story on REALLY "making a difference"
Rotarians get involved in all sorts of Community improvement programs, and on Anzac day we noted the Rotary clubs in Poland that were doing much to help the youth badly affected by the current war in Ukraine. Fortunately here in Australia we are far removed from war, and indeed Australia is seen as a refuge for many people, accepting 20,000 refugees per year, and over 850,000 since WW2.
If you want to know more check out Rotary Down Under. Especially an article on the Karen community from Myanmar and how Rotarians in W.A. helped them settle and contribute to that small community.
There are some useful information on the differences between refugees and asylum seekers in the article, and this brilliant article on the Rotary Club of Nhill and their input into refugee resettlement. It concerns refugees from Myanmar, and you'll recall that your club was also able to support the women causes in that area, earlier this year through the local " Yes, she matters" group led locally by Gary Bradford, who came and talked to the club about the impact of war and violence on the women in the border area between Thailand and Myanmar.
Here's some of the article...
Nhill is a quiet country town in Western Victoria, close to the Victorian-South Australian border, halfway along the eight-hour drive from Adelaide to Melbourne. It’s the unlikely site of one of Australia’s greatest refugee settlement success stories, and Rotary Club of Nhill member, John Millington, is responsible for much of that success.
John joined Rotary 30 years ago, during which time he’s served as club president twice and once an assistant governor. However, it was a problem that emerged in his professional life that led to his greatest community challenge of all.
In 2013, John retired after 30 years as the general manager of poultry producer Luv-a-Duck, Nhill’s largest private employer and one of the two largest providers of duck meat to the Australian market. John’s wife Margaret was also involved in an administrative role, and during John’s 30-year tenure, production had grown
from 6000 ducks per week to 100,000 ducks per week.
In order to produce such a volume, a steady and reliable workforce was required. But they were struggling to fill vacancies due to the declining and ageing population, hampering the company’s expansion plans.
Previously, the company had spent thousands advertising nationally in the attempt to attract workers, but hardly anyone wanted to move to a remote location like Nhill. A few positions had been filled by people from South Africa and Zimbabwe escaping the dangerous living conditions in those countries. Luv-a-Duck was the first company in the region to use the 457 Visa process to employ overseas staff. Many of those staff are still employed in Nhill or have started their own businesses.
“If we in the town didn’t do something, nobody else would,” John said. “No white knight was going to ride over the horizon to help us.”
ROTARIANS HELPING REFUGEES
Over the past nine years, close to 300 Karen refugees have resettled in Nhill and the wider region, attracted by jobs offered by local poultry producer Luv-a-Duck and 17 other businesses in the area.
This eventually led to an invitation from Rural Australians for Refugees (RAR) to give advice on how to settle people from other cultures in regional areas. Prior to that meeting in 2009, Margaret said neither she nor John knew much about the Karen, a small ethnic minority group from Burma (Myanmar).
“We learnt that over 500,000 Karen had fled from Burma to escape persecution by their home country’s brutal military dictatorship. They went to the refugee camps along the Thai border,” Margaret explained.
Many younger Karen have no memory of village life before the camps, when their families lived as subsistence farmers. Some Karen families have been displaced for over 20 years, trapped in refugee camps without employment or freedom.
As part of Australia’s annual resettlement program, many Karen refugees were invited by the Australian Federal Government to move to Melbourne and housed predominately in the western suburb of Werribee.
Assisted by AMES Australia, John and Margaret travelled to Werribee to present two PowerPoints to 120 refugees on the employment opportunities at Luv-a-Duck and a snapshot of the Nhill township. They presented to two groups and before they finished their first presentation, the clipboard they had brought to register interest was already full.
There were a few reservations – mentioning Nhill was near the Victoria-South Australia state border provoked anxiety in the audience as they thought the border referred to was the Thai/Burma border, which to the Karen, meant the constant threat of military violence, not vast expanses of dryland farming country.
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A few weeks later, a bus was chartered to Nhill, with 20 refugees taking a tour of the town and the Luv-a-Duck premises. The Karen met many of the locals, including the local hospital, schools, churches, police and, importantly, the volunteers at the Nhill Neighbourhood House (who were to become pivotal in the settlement).
Now that's making a difference...!!!