More than 70 youth students from AMES Footscray, Werribee and St Albans have begun an AFL football orientation and training program as part of the Western Bulldogs CALDplay program. Three AMES teams will take part in the program to run…

Last week a welcoming message to immigrants and refugees was heard loud and clear across Australia. It seemed as if the entire creative community of the country took up their pens, paintbrushes and computer mice to write the words ‘Real…

Blinded by a land mine explosion, exiled from his boyhood village by a brutal military regime and after more than 20 years stuck in a camp for the displaced, Karen-Burmese refugee Ngo Way still finds reasons to smile. The 46-year-old…

Global remittances, or money sent back home by immigrants and migrant workers, has soared to a staggering $586 billion – a sum of money larger than the entire economies of countries like Uruguay, Kenya, Bulgaria or Guatemala, according to a…

A short walk from Vienna’s famous Prater parkland sits a unique hotel where the guests are not the only travellers present. The recently opened Magdas Hotel stands as solid, bricks-and-mortar evidence of the benefits of employing refugees. All but five…

​Footscray AMES Hospitality Class had its first session at William Angliss Institute (WAI) on Tuesday 14 April. Students started the day with a tour of their new campus, followed by lunch in the Observation Restaurant. Fellow hospitality students run the…

Most Australians are familiar with the story of the Anzac and the grit and determination shown by young Aussies fighting and dying for their country. But many Australians are unaware of the ethnic diversity present in the ranks of the…

Refugee resettlement has created 70 full-time jobs and added $40 million to a struggling rural Victorian town’s economy, a new study shows. Since early 2010, about 170 Karen refugees from Myanmar (Burma) have resettled at Nhill in western Victoria’s wheatbelt,…

A small town in Victoria has gained an economic benefit of $41.5m from resettling refugees, a report has found, pointing to the possible gains available to other local communities. Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/apr/23/victorian-town-gets-41m-benefit-from-resettling-burmese-karen-refugees?CMP=soc_568

A small town in western Victoria could be pointing the  way forward for both regional development and resettling refugees after a new study revealed the benefits of embedding refugee communities in regional Australia. The program to resettle refugees in the…

A program to resettle refugees in a struggling regional Victorian town has resulted in positive outcomes for the refugee families and added seventy jobs and more than $40 million to the local economy, according to a ground-breaking economic impact study.…

Sri Lankan-born Tamil man, Kamalanathan Pakkianathan, also known as Theepan, has been granted permanent residency in Australia and is currently employed at Gunnedah Leather Processors. He has decided to share his story of fear, hunger, frustration and, eventually, triumph on…