Voices of Hope- celebrating welcome for refugees
Description
Join us for a powerful evening of storytelling, music, and community as we come together to raise funds and hope for people seeking refuge.
This special night will feature:
Lived experience stories
Music and cultural expression
A shared Middle Eastern meal
A meaningful opportunity to give
At Embrace Sanctuary, we believe everyone deserves a place to belong.
Your presence helps create spaces of welcome, connection, and hope.
Event Details
Saturday 30 May
7:00–9:30pm
Kensington Town Hall
Join us. Listen. Give. Be part of welcome.
Embrace Sanctuary Australia is growing a movement of welcome, connection and belonging for those forced to flee their homelands. At a time marked by division and hatred, Let's come together and celebrate the joy of community. Creating diverse communities is up to all of us.
So far...
We have supported 12 CRISP groups to form
12 refugee families have been welcomed to Australia
A network of 310 refugees and asylum seekers have been connected and supported by their local communities
Over 4.5 thousand students have been challenged by the stories of our young refugee speakers visiting their schools
112 volunteers have been trained and supported in trauma informed care and cross cultural engagement
This evening brings together a diverse community in a spirit of welcome and respect.
Event Details:
Dress: Smart casual
Food: A shared Middle Eastern meal (all food is halal)
Drinks: This is an alcohol-free event
Lineup
Firooza Amiri
Firooza is a member of the Afghanistan national women's cricket team, which alone places her in a category of human beings with more courage in one hand than most of us will accumulate in a lifetime. Not content with being an elite athlete, Firooza also serves as her team's spokesperson and media representative — because apparently just playing international cricket wasn't quite enough to keep her busy. She also brings her expertise to commentating for SBS Sports podcast. She is a powerhouse advocate for the rights of women and girls across the world, a sought-after speaker and presenter, and the kind of person who makes you reassess every excuse you have ever made about not having enough time. We are privileged to have her as part of the Embrace Sanctuary team as a community connector, accomplished speaker, and group facilitator for the Lived Experience Library. She is, in short, doing considerably more than the rest of us and has the grace not to mention it.
Tri Nguyen
Nguyễn Hữu Trí is a former boat person who, as a child, made the kind of journey most of us can barely comprehend—crossing oceans with his father in search of safety and a future. These days, he’s a pastor, storyteller, musician, and tireless advocate, channelling that lived experience into work that quietly (and sometimes not-so-quietly) moves people to both tears and action. Trí has a rare ability to hold a room—whether through pastoral leadership, heartfelt music, or stories that stay with you long after the lights come up. He is deeply committed to walking alongside asylum seekers and First Nations communities, weaving together compassion, justice, and just enough humour to keep us all grounded. In this performance, Trí will share Suitcase of Memories, a powerful story of escape, alongside I Will Wait—a moving musical reflection on longing and resilience, inspired by Solmaz, who after 12 years has finally received permanent residency and now waits to be reunited with the son she has not seen all that time. Expect to laugh gently, reflect deeply, and leave with your heart slightly rearranged.
Naomi Chua - CEO of Embrace Sanctuary Australia
Naomi is the Founder and CEO of Embrace Sanctuary Australia, a title that undersells what is essentially a one-woman humanitarian force of nature who has spent thirty years refusing to accept that changing the world is someone else's problem. Where most people respond to the global displacement crises by feeling sad about it briefly before scrolling on, Naomi responded by packing her bags and moving to Kenya and then South Africa. For six years. This tells you everything you need to know about Naomi Chua. Her CV reads like a gap year that got wildly out of hand — Somali communities in Carlton, social enterprises in Kenya, healing of memories in South Africa, English language schools in Dandenong, and somehow, after three decades of this, she arrived at 2023 and thought, "you know what would be fun? Starting an entirely new organisation." Embrace Sanctuary Australia was duly born, because apparently retirement is simply not a concept Naomi has encountered. She is a community connector, a catalyser of local action, and a woman who has single-handedly made the rest of us feel quietly guilty about how we spent our weekends. We are enormously grateful she is on our team. We are also slightly terrified of her.
Lisa Button - CEO of Community Refugee Sponsorship Australia
Lisa is the CEO of Community Refugee Sponsorship Australia, an organisation she instigated into existence in 2018 — because when Lisa sees a gap in the system, she doesn't write a strongly worded letter about it, she builds an entire organisation. She began her career as a commercial lawyer, which she apparently found insufficiently complicated, and has spent more than fifteen years working in refugee law, policy, and programs with organisations including the Centre for Policy Development, Save the Children, and Refugee Legal. She is also a Fellow with the Centre for Policy Development, has served as a director of multiple refugee-led organisations, and somehow found time to complete a Masters in Public and International Law on top of her BA/LLB(Hons) from the University of Melbourne. She has advised the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs as a member of the Settlement Advisory Council. Lisa lives in Melbourne and is the proud mother of three boys, which, given everything else on this list, suggests her capacity for chaos management is truly without limit.
Tamas Wells
Tamas is a Melbourne/Naarm-based songwriter, artist and academic who appears to have negotiated a slightly more generous arrangement with time than the rest of us. He writes beautifully introspective indie folk songs that have quietly travelled the world, earning him record deals in Japan, France, China and Australia—an international career built on thoughtful lyrics and a well-tuned guitar. Since 2008, Tamas has toured internationally, offering audiences music that invites you to slow down, listen closely, and perhaps reconsider your life choices (in the best possible way). Beyond music, his paintings have been shortlisted for several national portrait prizes, including the National Portrait Gallery's Darling Prize, confirming that he can capture a likeness with a brush just as well as he can capture existential longing in a lyric. In a plot twist that feels almost unfair, Tamas also spent seven years working with aid organisations in Myanmar, before returning to academia where he now co-leads the Myanmar Research Network at the University of Melbourne. So while most people struggle to choose between one career path, Tamas simply said “yes” to all of them—and made it look calm, thoughtful, and poetic along the way.
Maria Dimopoulos - CEO of the Settlement Council of Australia
Maria is the CEO of the Settlement Council of Australia, the national peak body for settlement, representing agencies across the country that provide direct services to people of refugee and migrant backgrounds. In other words, Maria is in charge of making sure Australia actually lives up to its reputation as a welcoming nation — a job that requires both enormous dedication and, one suspects, an extremely good therapist. A recipient of the Member of the Order of Australia and an inductee to the Victorian Honour Roll of Women, Maria has collected accolades the way the rest of us collect unread emails. She is a lauded human rights advocate and champion of diversity and gender equality, with extensive expertise in the rights and meaningful inclusion of women from migrant and refugee backgrounds in policy and system reform. She is, in short, the person in the room who has already thought of the thing you were about to suggest, done it, and written the national framework around it. We are delighted to have her and are doing our best to keep up.
Andrew Chua
Meet our fabulous emcee for the night! Andrew is a Board Member of the Australian Psychological Society and a psychologist with close to 30 years of deep experience in cross-cultural practice, life transitions, trauma, and mental health — which is a polished way of saying he has spent years helping people hold it together while the world around them falls apart. His career trajectory reads less like a CV and more like a man who simply cannot sit still, having accumulated experience across education, IT, design, community youth work, celebrancy — fields that share almost nothing in common except Andrew's enthusiastic presence in each of them. Andrew sincerely believes every human being has profound worth and potential, which, after years in this many professions, is either a testament to his character or a sign that he may need to see a psychologist.
Celia Celia
Celia Celia is a Melbourne-based musician best known for her delightfully titled track Grandpa Jumped the Fence—a song that raises questions, answers none of them, and somehow makes you want to hit repeat anyway. When she’s not releasing music, Celia can be found on YouTube, bravely inviting the internet into her creative process as she builds songs from scratch. It’s part musical experiment, part gentle rebellion against perfectionism, and part reminder that making something—anything—is far more important than making it flawless. With a knack for turning everyday moments into memorable melodies, Celia champions creativity that’s honest, unpolished, and joyfully human. In a world obsessed with the finished product, she’s here to make the process the main event—and somehow makes it look like fun.
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