Leadership in Action Project Week 3: My Typical Day at SpeakOut and Learning New Things in Australia
My third week of my LiA in Sydney, Australia was busy with prepping for various events and working closely with the SpeakOut team and community.
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The past three weeks at SpeakOut have been very interesting and a great experience for me. Through being a volunteer intern at the organization, I have attended multiple events and helped host well-being sessions for immigrant women across the greater Sydney area. Usually, on a typical day, I leave where I am staying at around 8am and get to the office at around 9am. At the office, I work from 9am-12pm before taking a break, doing various tasks that SpeakOut’s CEO assigns to me or other team members ask of me. I have worked on various projects, helping with organizing the well-being sessions for immigrant women, as well as helping with our upcoming fundraising event to help raise funds for the organization. At 12pm, I take lunch, and something I truly enjoy and find to be very welcoming about the office is that most of the staff take lunch at the same time and tell stories. I have shared many laughs with the various team members, and I truly enjoy working with such a lovely team of individuals. After lunch, I work until the evening, sometimes sitting in with various client meetings, taking notes, and helping in other ways.
My work with the immigrant women community in the Sydney area, in addition to the Afghan women migrant population, has allowed me to learn more about Australian history. I have had the opportunity to speak with many team members about the Aboriginal populations. Similar to American history and what was done to the Indigenous people of the United States, in Australia as well, the Aboriginal population were killed in large numbers and their population size significantly decreased, and over the years, immigration to Australia has very much increased, first and foremost from Europe, especially the UK, and later from various other countries, especially with the Australian Gold Rush and, of course, since the World Wars and Cold War, including its various proxy battles, many other immigrants have come to the country. Although not necessarily a new topic for me, as my research last summer was focused on Afghan American migration waves, learning about the case of migration in Australia and how Australian migration history has developed has been quite interesting. A further layer of interest for me has been educating myself about the increased risk of domestic violence immigrant women face, something which SpeakOut greatly works on in the Sydney area.
Due to my own interests in migration and my research, SpeakOut has allowed me to take on a hands-on experience with the immigrant women they support and has created a community for. Thus, as the days have passed, I have been able to meet the SpeakOut community, talk with various women and clients, and learn more about Australian migration policy/history. I have specifically done this through helping with the well-being sessions SpeakOut hosts for immigrant women in the Merrylands suburb of Sydney. In the last three weeks of my Leadership in Action project, I hope to further connect with the Sydney female migrant population through programs like the well-being sessions SpeakOut hosts, and learn more about Australian history, especially as it relates to, and differs from, American immigration history.
Elaheh Khazi
(She/Her)
Laidlaw Scholar , Columbia University
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This is awesome Elaheh and it's amazing to hear how much hands-on experience you're really getting this summer! How does it feel moving away from research and doing more community oriented work?
Thank you so much, Audrea! For me, as the work I do at SpeakOut goes hand-in-hand with the research I did last summer, it honestly feels like a good transition. Given my research, I was able to garner a better understanding of Afghan migration and working with SpeakOut on various projects for Afghan Australians and other immigrant groups has been incredible, as I get to be in service for a group that I have learned about previously.