Present: John Houltham (chair), Simon Collins, Paul Robertson, Daniel Turkel, Mike Yoffe, Cheng Goh (Settlement Support North Shore coordinator), Jill Nerheny (Northcote/Birkenhead Community Coordinator).
Apologies: Alex Abela, Anna Fyfe-Rahal, Dr Maung Maung and Savita Malhotra.
Welcome: John welcomed Cheng and Jill and thanked them for taking time to see us on the weekend.
Minutes of last meeting, 11/10/08: Approved (John/Paul).
Matters arising
Daniel reported that he had not yet registered the trust as a charity under the new Charities Commission rules.
Inward correspondence
Alex Abela, 19/10/08: returning to NZ from 22/10/08.
Discount Domains, 22/10/08: annual bill for $31.44 for domain name friends-of-refugees.org.nz
Norbert Haley, 29/10/08: requests monthly automatic payment of $19.92 for website maintenance.
Daniel Turkel, 6/11/08: confirming monthly automatic payment of $19.92 to Norbert activated.
Discount Domains, 19/11/08: confirming friends-of-refugees.org.nz renewal for 1 year.
Norbert Haley, 22/11/08: domain fee paid from Mike Yoffe's credit card.
Angela McGregor?, 6/12/08: volunteer working with 5 Rohingya refugee families from Burma in Mt Wellington, running Computers in Homes scheme, wants to find resources for them.
Jason Moon (Radio NZ), 10/12/08: planning picnic at Piha for refugees in Feb 2009.
Cecilia Suarez, 22/12/08: Christmas greeting from Mexico.
National Refugee Network, 19/02/09 (through Aotearoa Ethnic Network): Press release announcing creation of national network of refugee communities, chaired by Auckland Refugee Community Coalition chair Kafeba Mundele (Congolese Community). See: http://www.aucklandrefugee.org.nz/
Fe Sarmiento, 24/02/09: Updated contact details.
Jill Nerheny (North Shore City Council community worker), 13/03/09: North Shore Settlement Support meeting 3 April on "Supporting refugees in rebuilding their lives" – to find out what support is available to refugees on the Shore and what more can be done. Covering note said, "It's been a while since the Shore has welcome larger groups of refugee families into its fold. Much of it has been due to the limited number of public housing stock available. This is about to change in the near future. Work is in-progress to rejuvenate public housing (Northcote, as an example) and have more housing stock available on the Shore."
Liesa Walter (Refugee Services), 19/03/09: Auckland International Cultural Festival to be held at Wesley Park, Mt Roskill, Sun 29 March. (Notice posted on our website – thanks, Norbert!).
Angela Gibbons (Platinum IT), 19/03/09 (through Aotearoa Ethnic Network): Free computer training for refugee families starts 1 July, applications close 29 May.
Ruth DeSouza? (AUT), 27/03/09 (through Aotearoa Ethnic Network): National conference on refugee resettlement to be held at AUT's Akoranga Drive campus on 18-21 Nov. See: http://www.aut.ac.nz/research/research_institutes/niphmhr/centre_for_asian_and_migrant_health_research/refugee_health_and_wellbeing_conference.htm
Chandra Yogeswaran (Refugee Services), 27/03/09: Refugee Services Auckland newsletter.
Dr Merv Coates (International Connections, Waitakere), 03/04/09: "Love Burma" fundraising dinner to be held at Laidlaw College 26/04/09.
Burma Campaign, 14/04/09 (via Sally Collins): Sign at website to free Burma political prisoners: http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/fbppn.htm
Saw Aw Baw Mu Ku Thay (Auckland University student), 16/04/09: Request for help in research on work experiences of Asian immigrants.
Amy Wang, 21/04/09: back from Dubai, new cellphone 021 037 3707.
Aidan Burch (Refugee Services), 22/04/09: Labour Department background paper on refugees from Burma.
Dr David Robie (AUT), 23/04/09: Dutch film on Burma, "Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country", to be introduced by Karen journalist Violet Cho, Room WE240?, AUT Wellesley St, Tue 26 May, 5pm. See: http://www.pmc.aut.ac.nz/docs/events/events_burmaVJfilm_May26_09.pdf
Peter Moses (lawyer), 24/04/09: Request for help for Aye Maw, Burmese national facing deportation.
Outward correspondence
Angela McGregor?, 9/12/08: brief note to say come back to us if we can help.
Jason Moon, 10/01/09: please keep us in touch about Piha picnic so we can bring some families from Burma.
Hayden Donnell ( North Shore Times), 12/02/09: Congratulations on stories which helped get Iranian Christan refugee freed on bail (brief thanks from Hayden received 17/02/09).
Peter Moses (lawyer), 29/04/09: forwarding Labour Department background paper on Burma for possible use in Aye Maw's case.
Thanks to Hayden Donnell
John noted our gratitude to North Shore Times journalist Hayden Donnell for his long support for the refugee community, dating back to the photos he gave to the participants in our fundraising event at the Pumphouse in October 2005, and extending more recently to many stories about refugees and asylum-seekers on the Shore.
Treasurer's report
Daniel reported that we have $1402.07 in the bank, a reduction of $104.60 since our last meeting due to the payment of $50 to the Rawene Centre for the Trivial Pursuits night and a new automatic payment of $19.92 a month to Norbert Haley to maintain our website.
Simon reported that he had tried to bank a cheque for $20 from Dr Maung Maung and Savita, donated in lieu of attending the Trivial Pursuits night, but the cheque could not be accepted because it was more than six months old. He apologised to the trust for not having banked the cheque earlier.
Future of the Trust
John said the trust was keen to do what it could to support refugees but its original purpose, of supporting English classes and other services for refugees at the Rawene Centre, had ended. He invited Cheng and Jill to offer suggestions for useful things the trust might do.
Jill recalled that she was involved in setting up the trust in 2001 and believed that its vision had been positive. She thanked all past and present members of the trust and said our work had been a joy to watch. She also believed that the trust would be much needed in the future, especially when Housing NZ's renewal programme in Northcote was completed next year which would allow Refugee Services to place new refugees on the Shore again. In the meantime, there had been several refugee families, mainly from Iraq, settling on the Shore independently because they declined to go elsewhere in the country where Refugee Services had allocated them, preferring to stay here with other members of their own communities and close to specialist services (in one current case, a 9-year-old with heart problems who needed support from Starship Hospital). Such families were cut off from support from Refugee Services social workers and volunteers. In one case, two families who declined to go where they were allocated were put in a corner of the hall at the Mangere refugee centre and were not given packages of bedding from the Tzu Chi Buddhist charity which were given to all the other families. In the 5 recent cases that ended up on the Shore, the families resented this and kept referring to it for a long time afterwards, giving them a sour start to life in NZ – even though Jill and others put the word out and furnished homes for them.
Cheng outlined her role as one of 19 local Settlement Support offices around NZ, funded by the Department of Labour. She and her co-worker run seminars and services for newcomers, both refugees and migrants, based upstairs in the Norman King Building next to the Northcote Library (Tel. 486 8635). They are available to help newcomers at Citizens Advice Bureaus at Birkenhead on Mondays, Northcote on Tuesdays, Glenfield on Wednesdays, Takapuna on Thursdays and Browns Bay on Fridays. They do not provide case management social work, but refer people to other services and help them make the connections. There were 127 individual refugees who were known to have settled on the Shore since 2004 – mostly family reunification cases, but including some, as Jill mentioned, who chose to stay in Auckland rather than go where they had been allocated elsewhere in NZ. They had all the rights of NZ citizens, including access to welfare benefits and health services, and usually they had strong support from their families and/or communities here, but they needed Kiwis to tell them what was available and help them access services.
Jill said she had challenged RMS (now Refugee Services) 4 or 5 years ago about the need to support refugees who chose to settle somewhere other than where they had been allocated, and about the need for ongoing support sometimes many years after the initial six months which Refugee Services social workers and volunteers cover. For example, some women still had mental health issues 7 years after arrival. She had also raised with RMS the need to consult with local schools and other social services about new refugee families before they were placed in local communities, so that services could be ready for them and neighbours and the whole community could be informed about the countries the refugees were coming from. She developed a package of policies for new refugees including a powhiri and civic welcome from the mayor, meetings with neighbours to explain the countries and cultures of the newcomers and workshop and information kit for volunteer support workers on the services available in the local area. This was now ready to go when the next bulk numbers of refugees started arriving on the Shore from late next year. She had also been to see Northcote MP and Immigration Minister Jonathan Coleman about the needs to support refugees who declined to go where they were told and those who needed support beyond the initial 6 months.
Simon noted that Waitakere City was already providing powhiri and civic welcomes to significant groups of new refugees.
John noted that social work and medical support could be accessed for schoolchildren through "Individual Employment Plans" initiated through services for children with special needs.
There was a long discussion about problems in the Burundian community on the Shore.
Cheng suggested that the trust could help with a backup system of contact points that she could go to to create a network to support a new family coming to the Shore – "a friendly neighbour that walks with the family". She had asked Refugee Services to notify her when refugee families were coming.
Jill said it was important to have a welcoming neighbourhood. She did not want to take refugees out of one war zone and place them in "War Zone 2", as the Housing NZ area of Northcote Central was before the current renewal programme. She said Police and Housing NZ were now much more actively suppressing drug dealing in that area and she believed it would now be a welcoming neighbourhood.
Simon suggested that the trust could be the nucleus of a network of volunteers who could be called upon by Jill or Cheng to support new refugee families moving into the North Shore without official support from Refugee Services. The five of us present at the meeting could not do it by ourselves, but perhaps Jill or Cheng could call a public meeting or put out a call through the media for other potential volunteers to come forward. The trust's legal structure and impending charitable status under the Charities Commission would be available for the wider group to use.
Jill said she believed there would be many people in the community who would be willing to come forward.
John said he would arrange a meeting with Cheng to talk further about what the trust could do within the limits of our money and time.
Jill said money was not a problem; for example, she was getting funding for a "men's shed" where migrant and refugee men could work on practical projects such as toys for a local creche with Kiwi men – a model which has been successful in Australia. The real need was for people to give time to provide personal support and friendship for new refugees.
It was agreed that John would meet again with Cheng in the near future to discuss the potential role of the trust in more detail. He will then call another meeting of the trust.