Cultural consultant Gabrielle Fahkri retells an incident at a childcare centre in Airport West not long after the Bosnian War to describe her line of work.
“Every time a plane flew over the centre the children would scream and run under the tables,” Ms Fahkri said, adding that staff couldn’t understand the children’s behaviour.
“These children had come from a war-torn country and unless these teachers did something about it, these children were going to be traumatised. When planes go overhead [in their country] they know there’s going to be bombs.”
For the past 15 years, the Thornbury resident has conducted workshops educating service providers about different cultures and in particular how to understand refugees and asylum seekers.
Next month she will host a workshop at Whittlesea council that will focus on understanding and working effectively with refugees and asylum seekers for educators such as childcare workers, kindergarten and primary school teachers.
In it she hopes to debunk the “huge myths” surrounding asylum seekers, talk about which communities are coming into the Whittlesea area and explain the difference between migrants, refugees and asylum seekers.
“Because of the way our government demonises people who come by boat, they’re stigmatised,” Ms Fahkri, 62, said. “I want to give people strategies to understand where these children have come from.”
And Ms Fahkri should know. The basis of her talks comes from 23 years of experience working with migrants and refugees at VICSEG (Victorian Co-operative on Children’s Services for Ethnic Groups), predominantly with Muslim refugees from Iraq and Afghanistan.
She also opened and ran the Thornbury Asylum Centre in partnership with the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre.
At the moment she juggles her time between running the cultural workshops and looking after the needs of her disabled son Simon, who’s 40 and bipolar as well as suffering from a severe intellectual disability, autism and deafness.
She describes work as a release from a stressful parenting role. But she’s busy on both fronts. “Generally, people want to know how to do their job better, to be better educators, to deal with our changing population of refugees and to be more culturally competent.”
» Gabrielle Fahkri’s cultural workshop will be held in the Fountain View Room, City of Whittlesea council offices, South Morang, on March 6, 7pm-9pm. Details: call 9404 8865
