On Tuesday, February 24, 10 Migrant Resource Centres and Multicultural Services across NSW will host free events for the local community to come together in a show of solidarity. A united voice will be on display through activities such as forums, discussions, soccer games, sausage sizzles and performances by local musicians.

This year marks 40 years since the Racial Discrimination Act was passed and SSI will be supporting the Australian Human Rights Commission’s conference convened to reflect on the Act’s significance. At SSI we work with culturally and linguistically diverse communities, including people from refugee backgrounds and asylum seekers. We consider the Act an important piece of the social framework that provides rights to all Australians.

Thank you Premier Mike Baird. Your comments at a recent Australia Day function in support of refugees and asylum seekers were positive reinforcement for all of us who work to help these people make the most of their lives in Australia. I had the pleasure of hearing Mr Baird say emphatically that NSW was in a position to support more refugees and asylum seekers and that the state would welcome them.

SSI was busy throughout December–January celebrating the achievements of Ability Links NSW and introducing the program to local communities. Ability Links NSW (ALNSW) supports people with a disability, their families and carers to live the life they want, as valued members of their community.

With the AFC Asian Cup capturing the imagination of all soccer fans, some of SSI’s young refugee and asylum seeker clients will celebrate the sport at a “football festival”. To coincide with the Asian Cup, social development organisation Football United is co-hosting the Dream Asia Unity Football Festival  for youth at Sydney Olympic Park’s Hockey Centre, with the Asian Football Confederation (AFC).

Students of Sydney Church of England Girls Grammar School (SCEGGS) Darlinghurst, and their families have dug deep and raised more than $4,000 for SSI’s refugee and asylum seeker clients, as well as food packages. SSI CEO Violet Roumeliotis said the generous donation was a boost that would benefit many people.

Settlement Services International CEO Violet Roumeliotis has been named in Pro Bono Australia’s Impact 25 list of the most influential people working in the not-for-profit sector in 2014. Ms Roumeliotis was chosen in the top 25 from 200 people working in the sector, by more than 3,600 Pro Bono Australia readers who voted.

‘Tis the season for giving and membersof Hillsong Church have continued their generous support for SSI’s asylum seeker clients with donations of food and gifts for children and families. The church has supplied Christmas presents for about 100 children in Sydney who are seeking asylum, as well as food hampers for families.

A partnership between Legal Aid NSW and settlement services provider Settlement Services International (SSI) has been effective in providing free legal assistance to recent arrivals and migrants, especially in Sydney’s west, an independent review has found. Almost 2,200 services were provided to clients in the first year of the project and the partners today signed an undertaking to continue the successful collaboration.

Jenny Yang and Joseph Cheung are an impressive couple, sharing their knowledge and experience with other people with disability in the community. Their energy, enthusiasm and drive are inspiring, and on this International Day of People of Disability they acknowledge and celebrate the many other inspiring people they have met in the community.

SSI client Pouya and the Asbati Family performed an eclectic set of world music to an enthusiastic audience in Ashfield on November 18. The performance was presented as part of Ashfield Council’s ‘Frolic in the Forecourt’ – a series of free concerts and activities at midday on Tuesdays in the council’s forecourt, on Parramatta Road.

Thanks to a generous member of the Bankstown community, a 16-year-old refugee boy with cerebral palsy has been gifted a much-needed electric bed that has meant he no longer needs to spend 18 hours a day on his mother’s lap. The boy, whose family was originally from Iraq and is now living in Warwick Farm in western Sydney, previously spent most of the day in his mother’s arms because it was not safe for him to be in a normal bed.

Small business entrepreneurs of refugee background were celebrated on Monday November 17 at the launch event of Ignite Small Business Start-ups (Ignite) in Sydney. Attended by almost 100 people, the event featured catering, photography, and film by some of the entrepreneurs supported by the Ignite initiative.

Cricket has been something of a saviour for Tamil asylum seeker Uthay, since he came to Australia. Uthay, his preferred name, is originally from Sri Lanka and is awaiting assessment for refugee protection. He is a Tamil man, 27 years old, and the potential consequences for men like Uthay in Sri Lanka are such that his full name and image can’t be revealed.

SSI’s Storytelling and Film-making Workshop program culminates this month with a showcase of short films. On November 14, SSI friends, staff, volunteers and clients are invited to a special screening of films made by SSI’s asylum seeker clients during the six-week workshop program.

Sarah Yahya, 19, was born hearing impaired in Iraq in 1995, to a Mandaean family that lived in fear for their safety. The Mandaean ethnic-religious group has been increasingly persecuted since not long after Sarah arrived in the world. In the cover of night, aged six, Sarah, her sister and mother, were whisked from their home and driven 12 hours in to Jordan. Once there, they went immediately to the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to seek protection. Their father had been arrested and was in prison, serving four years for his beliefs.

Bashir Yousufi was just 13 when he set out on the long journey from Pakistan through Asia to Australia. His father had been killed in Afghanistan by Taliban extremists, Bashir said, because he was of the Hazara ethnic group, and his mother had died from cancer

Customers of Sydney bank teller Asif Haideri come and go, never suspecting he is much different to them. Those who he strikes a conversation with are shocked, he said, to learn he is ethnic Hazara from Afghanistan and was once kidnapped and tortured by the Taliban. “I’m a bank teller and people talk to me every day,” Asif said. “When I say I am from Afghanistan and I came to Australia two years ago, they are shocked. They say, ‘really, I thought you were born here’. I say, no, have you heard of boat people? I am like them. They are shocked.”

The lives and settlement experiences of young refugees will be explored at the fourth and final Speakers’ Series event for 2014 hosted by Settlement Services International (SSI). Titled The strength of youth: young people and their refugee experiences, the event on Tuesday, November 11, will begin with three young people from refugee backgrounds sharing their stories.

Sport is renowned for bringing people from all over the world together, and now cricket has united two seemingly disparate groups of men. Refugees and people seeking asylum have joined members of Knox Grammar School’s ‘Old Boys’ association to hone their bat and ball skills together in the lead up to cricket season.   The weekly pre-season cricket clinics at Auburn District Cricket Club on Saturdays have resulted in a mutually beneficial partnership for the 18 or so refugees and asylum seekers, who are clients of SSI, and members of the Old Knox Grammarians’ Association.