ChangeMakers Refugee Forum

ChangeMakers Refugee Forum is a rights-based, non-government organisation (NGO) representing 14 refugee-background communities in Wellington New Zealand.

These are the Afghan, Assyrian, Burmese, Colombian, Eritrean, Ethiopian, Iraqi, Oromo, Sierra Leone, Somali, Sudanese, Rwandan, Ugandan and Zimbabwean communities.

RECENT INITIATIVES

Happy 2012!

We would like to thank you for the support and contributions you made to our work throughout 2011. We hope to continue to grow our relationships with refugee-background communities in 2012.

The theme for our first community forum will be Education. The forum will be held on  Sunday 11th February, from 4 - 6:30pm at Level 1 of the Multicultural Services Centre, located on 39 Webb Street.

All refugee-background community members are invited to attend. We look forward to seeing you there.

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Community Forum: Working with Police

Over 40 people from 10 different communities attended the ChangeMakers' Community Forum on Sunday 11 December. The Forum focussed on strengthening relationships between refugee-background communities and Police.

Presentations were given by two representatives from the Police, Ngatamatoa (Bud) Butler and Matt Boyce.

Communities raised a number of issues regarding the law, their rights, and their relationship with Police. Areas of concern included: questions on self-defence issues, concerns over language barriers, domestic violence, and the relationships between refugee-background communities and Police.

ChangeMakers is compiling information from communities on what the next steps in working with Police will be.

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New DVD and booklet resource available for purchase:

How bullying affects us: refugee-background youth talk back

This dvd and booklet explores the impact of bullying on refugee-background high school students.

ChangeMakers Refugee Forum and Voice Arts Trust worked with Collabor8 – a group of eight refugee-background youth – documenting youths’ views about the bullying and designing a drama, which was performed on World Refugee Day 2011.

 Watch a short clip of the DVD.

To buy a copy of the resource, please fill in this form and email it to alia@crf.org.nz, or contact her at 04 801 5812.