News

17/01/2009 - 20:50

New fund available for refugee-background university students

A fund to help pay for refugee-background students' tuition and student levy fees for the English Proficiency programme, The Foundation Studies Programme, or for Academic Writing in ESL is now available.

Refugee-background students preparing for university, or already studying at university and having difficulty managing their courses, can now receive financial assistance.

For more information, contact:

English Proficiency Programme
(04) 463 5607 / angela.joe@vuw.ac.nz

WRIT 151 Writing in English
(04) 463 5233 ext.8009 / jean.parkinson@vuw.ac.nz

WRIT 251 Academic Writing
(04) 463 9779 / stuart.webb@vuw.ac.nz

Foundation Studies
(04) 463 9762 / ian.masters@vuw.ac.nz

Pathways to Employment
(04) 805 0308 / judi.mccallum@refugeeservices.org.nz
19/12/2009 - 03:21

Progress made on Equity Campaign

A positive outcome of the Equity Campaign launched earlier this year has been the University of Auckland Council's recent approval of a revised Equity Policy, which includes refugee-background staff and students.
 

Victoria University is supporting the Auckland University's Equity Office staff to develop resources to support students and staff.

For background information and a copy of the Equity Campaign report, click here.
31/12/2009 - 11:00

Scholarships to study

Here are the links to scholarships at Tertiary Institutions and Polytechnics in Wellington.

Victoria University
Click here for a list of scholarships available to current or new students. You can search by name or subject area.

Victoria University also offers other scholarships that you can access by clicking here.

Massey University
Click here for a list of scholarships Massey University offers. You can access these scholarships by clicking the link below:

Wellington Institute of Technology (WELTEC)
WelTec has a wide variety of Scholarships on offer. Click here to find out more.

Whitireia Community Polytechnic
Click here for a list of scholarships that is available to Whitireia students who are studying fulltime.

 

 
21/01/2011 - 12:00

Barriers to Good Health

ChangeMakers has recently produced a report on the barriers facing people from a refugee background communities in achieving and maintaining good health.

 Information in this report was gathered at four focus groups held in May 2011. Focus group participants came from 11 different refugee-background communities.

The main barriers identified by participants were limited English language skills and issues around the use of interpreters; living in damp, mouldy houses; being unemployed and having limited incomes; stress resulting from trauma and/or being separated from their families; a lack of awareness of how to keep healthy in New Zealand; discrimination and a lack of culturally sensitive health services.

Participants made a number of suggestions on how to reduce these barriers and improve their health.

You can access the report here

 

 
22/06/2011 - 01:50

National Refugee Resettlement Strategy

Over 80 community members from 10 different communities identified the issues, challenges and barriers that need to be addressed in order for the five Refugee Resettlement Strategy outcomes to be achieved.  The Strategy is being developed by the Department of Labour, and ChangeMakers organised the forums to ensure communities have input into the proposed strategy.

In addition, ChangeMakers wrote a submission on the original draft that was developed by the DoL.  Our comments have focussed on having a strategy that includes the aspirations of all refugee background communities.  We think the strategy should be a rights based document for all refugee background communities to participate fully in New Zealand life.  We are concerned, however, that the timeframe and process for finalising the Strategy could undermine this.  In our submission we make recommendations to address these concerns.

You can read a summary of the three forums here. (Word doc, 183 kb).

You can read ChangeMakers' submission here (Word doc, 107 kb).

We continue to work DoL to ensure that communities get an opportunity to have input to and give feedback on the Strategy.