Who We Are

Some Activities We Do

General Educational Activities:

We run after-school classes (tutoring classes) that help younger children as well as older ones who want to get support for their studies. This is to prevent them from struggling at school which usually leads to dropping out of school specially by the young children. Dropping out is the start of many teenagers’ struggles with finding the right path to success and it causes their future to be in the dark leading to them making bigger mistakes which later lead to serious issues that cost them a lot. To help them with school means to ultimately prevent dropouts. We establish classes that have teachers supporting the kids with their school work.

Community Safety:

The community lacks crime prevention knowledge and is unsure of the roles and responsibilities of police and law enforcement agencies and how to communicate with them in Australia. The best way for this community to be educated and skilled in this area is through our office, which people of this area are strongly connected to.

We aim to increase activities such as patrolling with police, information sharing sessions and we will also focus on working with young people regarding responsible decision making, what to do in various situations and prevention of crimes leading to a peaceful environment.

Cultural differences and Racism: the Somalian community is close with many other African cultures as well as the Australian culture. We will hold activities that open our peoples’ eyes and encourage them to learn about and interact with other cultures and communities. It is important to have programs and activities such as sporting activities and cultural festivals that not only provide recreation and entertainment to those who cannot afford mainstream activities, that also bring friends and families from many different backgrounds together.

We also organise specific responsive workshops and classes targeting the youth about this matter and aim to erase the ignorance that leads to racism.

Sporting Activities:

The community office also puts a lot of effort in helping youth find ways in which they can entertain themselves and spend their free time. Ways that are actually healthy and good for them. One of which is connecting them to their favourite activity/hobby which is sporting activities such as soccer. We work in providing pathways for them to get in contact with sporting programs that are currently running in our area.

Counselling, Relationships and Communication:

We are very involved with families and the relationships between couples, parents and their children and also relationships across the community. We provide counselling as an important tool that helps to solve problems such as family, group and individual issues and conflicts and work with families to work through cultural and generational differences. Our staffs help by direct support or referral, aiming to reduce local conflict and also reduce the numbers that end in law enforcement.

Career Planning:

We have found that most of the youth have dropped out because of the lack of information and a role model to lead through the journey of school and support them. This has an impact on career options in the future.

We will hold information sessions and provide experts to help raise awareness and also provide study support and career advice and planning.

We also incorporate into this, opportunities to build the self-esteem of young people, which has been found to be very low; and seek to promote positive role models and leadership within the community.

The Community helps its members that need assistance with finding relevant jobs/work. We’re now working with a new program that targets unemployment within our Community. This program will provide assistance to jobseekers like resume writing, getting ready for interviews, etc. they will also be trained and connected to skill building agencies and institutes that will assist them in their area of interest.

Cooperation with other Organizations:

Important to all our work are the other agencies that we partner with. These include Moonee Valley City Council, Flemington Neighborhood Renewal, Victoria Police, African-Australian Communities and other organisations.