FUNDRAISING EVENT FOR YASS REFUGEE WELCOME GROUP

Please join us at a very special fundraising event for the Yass Refugee Welcome Group on Thursday 21 November.

The event will include a screening of the amazing documentary, Freedom Is Beautiful.

Tickets for this event are $30 + booking fee. Refreshments and a light supper will be provided to enjoy during the movie.

FREEDOM IS BEAUTIFUL

Freedom Is Beautiful is the story of two extraordinary, charismatic Kurdish refugees, Farhad Bandesh and Mostafa (Moz) Azimitabar who fled persecution in Iran and arrived in Australia separately by boat seeking asylum in 2013.

On Manus Island, where they spent 6 years, they met and formed a close friendship founded on art, music and a shared desire to speak out and resist. In 2019 they spent 18 months in immigration detention in Melbourne. In 2021 they finally gained their freedom.

During their years of captivity, they witnessed suffering and death, were isolated, dehumanised and assailed by a system designed to humiliate and break them. They refused to succumb.

Instead, they found tranquillity through music and art. This not only helped them survive, but also fight back, building their networks and using their voices to fight tirelessly for the freedom of everyone held.

Told in their own words, Freedom is Beautiful is an uplifting story of the power of love and our shared humanity.

YASS REFUGEE WELCOME GROUP

The Yass Refugee Welcome Group is a group of professionals and business owners in the Yass Valley participating in a pilot program helping communities across Australia welcome refugees.

This hospitality mirrors that extended generously by the Yass community in the 1980’s when it resettled Vietnamese families through the Yass Refugee Resettlement Committee. As the Mayor of Yass and Chair of the Committee, Syd Dobbin, observed at the time you can ignore statistics, but you can’t ignore a family that needs help. The Yass Refugee Welcome Group is continuing this hospitality by participating in a pilot program coordinated by Community Refugee Sponsorship Australia (CRSA) called the Community Refugee Integration and Settlement Pilot (CRISP).

Through CRISP, a sponsoring community provides a soft landing for refugee families identified for resettlement by the Government. Under this program, refugee visa holders receive settlement support directly from groups such as The Yass Refugee Welcome Group, to achieve optimal settlement outcomes that help both the family and the Yass Valley community to flourish.

The Yass Refugee Welcome Group has committed to assisting a family taken in under the program for the first twelve months after their arrival.

The types of support needed by the family after they arrive will include - short-term accommodation and income support, long-term accommodation and the provision of requisite home furnishings, assistance in dealing with a raft of paperwork, assistance with health-care needs, finding employment and training, learning English, learning to drive, enrolment and settling into schools. Very importantly, the Yass Refugee Welcome Group will provide friendship, emotional support and connections to the local community. The group is keen to cultivate the culture of hospitality established by the combined effort of church and community groups in Yass in the 1980’s.

The social support of the community at this event would be a much-valued part of a warm Yass welcome for the family.