WORD of Bu Gay Pah Thei’s ability to help people get a job has spread through Australia’s Karen community, beyond central Victoria.
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The Loddon Campaspe Multicultural Services community development worker said newly arrived people had come from as far as Sydney seeking work.
Employment assistance might have prompted them to walk though the doors of the McCrae Street office, in Bendigo, but Ms Pah Thei said it was seldom the only support people needed to build a life in a new community and a new country.
There were so many other things: Learning English, opening a bank account, enrolling in school, getting medical help, using public transport, going shopping, buying a house, buying a car…
All the things that were new to Ms Pah Thei and her family when they arrived in Bendigo in 2007.
She was 12 years old when she, her mother, father and two siblings arrived – the first Karen family to move to Bendigo, Ms Pah Thei said.
It took three years for the family’s application to Australia to be approved.
Life in the Mae La Refugee Camp, in Thailand, was all Ms Pah Thei knew before she and her family arrived in Bendigo.
She was born in the camp, which was home to more than 36,600 people in January 2018.
Almost 80 per cent of residents at the time identified as Karen people.
Day-to-day life in Bendigo was initially difficult for Ms Pah Thei and her family.
“You start from scratch,” she said.
But Bendigo has long since become home.
It was where Ms Pah Thei grew up – attending secondary school, pursuing further studies, finding work, forming friendships, and then creating a family of her own and becoming an Australian citizen.
Working to help newly arrived families and individuals find their feet in Australia was not a vocation she had envisaged for herself.
Ms Pah Thei studied nursing – one of only two options she said were available to women in Thailand and Burma, the other being teaching.
“I don’t want to go back to nursing,” she said.
She finds the work she’s doing with LCMS enriching, and the people she’s working with seem to feel the same way.
Eh Wah Paw arrived in Australia 10 years ago from another refugee camp on the Thai border – Nu Po.
Much like Ms Pah Thei, she had little exposure to life outside the camp – it was her home for 11 years.
Melbourne was where her family initially settled in Australia, but Ms Paw didn’t feel like she belonged there.
The 22-year-old said she felt sad all the time when she was living in the Victorian capital.
Now she’s settled in Bendigo, she wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
“It’s not a big city like Melbourne so it’s easy to get around,” Ms Pah Thei translated.
Ms Paw speaks English, but is still gathering confidence in conversational settings.
She said learning the language was one of the hardest things about adapting to life in Australia.
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Starting a family in a new country also came with its challenges.
Ms Paw’s husband, Saw Tamalar Htoo, joined her in Bendigo two years ago from Myanmar, the country also known as Burma.
The couple met while Ms Paw was on holiday in Myanmar.
Her grandmother had recommended the match.
Marriage soon followed, and then Ms Paw fell pregnant with Maria.
There was little comparison between becoming a mother in a refugee camp on the Thai border and expecting in a community like Bendigo, Ms Paw said.
The kind of medical services at her disposal just weren’t available to pregnant women in Nu Po.
Ms Paw was also optimistic about three-year-old Maria’s education and career prospects.
Schooling in Australia is expected to differ greatly from her memories of her own education, which Ms Paw said included being smacked if she didn’t learn as fast as was expected of her – experiences with which Ms Pah Thei could relate.
The employment opportunities available to Mr Htoo in Bendigo were a departure from what he had known.
He worked as farmer in Burma, producing rice in the wet season and peanuts in the summer.
Here, he works in packaging at Hazeldene’s.
Being employed at Hazeldene’s compares favourably with farming in Burma, Mr Htoo said.
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Ms Pah Thei helped Mr Htoo secure employment in Bendigo. Supporting applicants through paperwork, job interviews, inductions and work orientations is all part of her role.
She has subsequently seen many Karen families settle and flourish in the community.
Funding recently awarded to LCMS will enable it to expand its services to offer a settlement support program.
The pathways to support for newly arrived people in Australia are complex, and LCMS executive officer Kate McInnes said there were a variety of ways in which people found the help they needed.
The new program adds to the suite of initiatives available for people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds in Bendigo, both within LCMS and in the wider community.
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Ms Paw said adjusting to life in a new country was overwhelming.
But she was grateful for the assistance available to do things like go to appointments, where she said language barriers were often most keenly felt.
“It’s very difficult without an interpreter service,” Ms Paw said.
She was appreciative of the established community members who volunteered their time to help newly arrived people.
Ms Pah Thei said LCMS also ran programs to bring newly arrived people of different cultures in Bendigo together, such as pop-up soccer tournaments and fortnightly dinners, during which attendees had opportunities to learn about another community member’s culture and sample their traditional cuisine.
Some of the programs Ms Pah Thei has been involved in have been the foundation for lasting friendships. It was hoped the new settlement program would add to the sense of community in Bendigo.
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