Networking events

We would like to thank everyone who attended MYAN WA's June forum. The forum was split into two halves - the first half included a panel discussion on the topic of the justice system with a focus on multicultural communities; the second half saw the Catalyst Youth Summit's five-team young team leaders host roundtable discussions on the topics of identity, violence, inclusion, the justice system, and well-being. We will distribute the notes from the discussion roundtables after the youth summit.  

We would like to thank the following people for theircontributionon the panel: 
Don Emanuel-Smith - Youth Policing and Community 
Matt Sharp - Community Engagement Co-ordinator 
Kate Longo - Community Corrections Officer  
Judith Zivkovic - Student Support Coordinator

Also, thank you to Nafiso Mohamed, one of the Catalyst Youth Summit organisers, who facilitated the panel discussion.

Thank you to those who attended the first forum for 2017! As part of our new look, and shorter format, we held a service/project speed share session which was a great way to get attendees to network and build connections in the sector. We were also joined by two outstanding young people, Amran Abdi who spoke about her book The Rainbow Hijab and the 2016 WA Young Person of the Year, Abdullahi Alim who shared his experience of coming to Australia as a refugee and his social impact work through the Lighthouse Strategy. 

MYAN WA's September Forum, saw some great discussion, lead by one of our Shout Out speakers, Yunnita Dewiyana who spoke about passion and what success means to everyone. We also trialed a highly successful service speedshare, which we'll repeat in upcoming forums. Attendees also contributed to YACWA's Pre-Budget Submission, specifically looking at the needs of refugee and migrant young people and the services that support them. 

The June forum meeting was a great opportunity to hear from WA’s delegate to Geneva Elizabeth Lang about her experience and participation at the 2016 UNHCR NGO Consultations. Elizabeth was one of the four Australian delegates who visited Geneva to participate at the Annual Tripartite Consultations on Resettlement and UNHCR Consultations.

​

We also heard from two of our Shout Out participants Amran Abdi and Vithan Thillairajah. Both redelivered their presentations from Shout Out and shared their experiences with the audience.

​

The forum meeting was also a great opportunity to review and discuss MYAN’s Federal Election 2016 Policy Platform. YACWA’s CEO Ross Wortham led the discussions with the sector representatives for engagement and feedback.

For the year 2016 MYAN WA intends to center the voices of migrant and refugee young people in all of its work. We plan to provide an opportunity for the sector through the meetings to hear from young people on topics that are important to them for each meeting of this year.

​

Our first meeting of the year focused on the topic of refugees and asylum seekers. We were honored to have Rosemary Sayer as our guest speaker. Rosemary spoke about her book More to the Story - Conversations with Refugees and her experience writing it.

​

For the second half of the meeting we heard a presentation from the team that took on the ‘topic Refugees and asylum seekers’ at the Catalyst Youth Summit back in early February. Following that there was a focused discussion network on the topic and how we can change attitudes towards refugees and asylum seekers in the community and MYAN WA’s role in that. 

Our last meeting for the year was all about involving young people. For the first time, young people facilitated it and our guest speakers were also young people who took part and reported on the findings from our project with the Commissioner for Children and Young People’s office.

​

Golda Signal and Hafiz Nazari, two of the young leaders from the CCYP CALD consultation project were the two guest speakers. They presented some of the themes that emerged out of the consultation and talked about their experiences as a consultation leader.

​

For the second part of the meeting, the young organizers of the Catalyst Youth Summit will facilitated a world cafe discussion on five topics they've identified as the most important to multicultural young people: mental health, refugees and asylum seekers, sense of belonging and citizenship, employment/education and youth radicalization. 

The meeting opened with a presentation from Nadine Liddy, National Coordinator of MYAN Australia. Nadine spoke about the work MYAN Australia and of the soon to be launched Youth Settlement Framework. Carmel Guerra, founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Centre for Multicultural Youth (CMY) then inspired the network with her presentation of how CMY went from a small network of youth workers 25 years ago, to the strong organisation it is today, advocating for young people and influential in policy and research. If you missed the meeting, you can access the MYAN Australia and CMY presentations on the MYAN WA website.

​

During the second half of the meeting, attendees brainstormed and came up with a number of ideas about what they want to see from MYAN WA into the future. This information will form the starting point, for a project kicking off in September looking at developing a sustainable and relevent model for MYAN WA over the coming years.