30 June 2020

Kia ora koutou

Welcome to our new look newsletter!

We have made a name change from COVID-19 Update to Ethnic Voices, and from now on, we will be sending this out monthly instead of fortnightly.  This reflects that we now have less information to share about COVID-19 but still want to keep in touch with updates and information from our office and the communities we serve. If anything important comes up in between newsletters, we will send out a special edition email to you all. We welcome your feedback about our newsletter and what you would like to see more of. Our email address is ethnic.communities@dia.govt.nz.

World Refugee Day was on Sunday, 20 June 2020. This year’s theme was “Every Action Counts”. The day was a chance to remind the world that everyone, including forcibly displaced people, have skills and experiences to contribute to society, and Every Action Counts in the effort to create a more just, inclusive, and equal world.

In this edition of the newsletter, we introduce you to Daniel Gamboa, one of our Senior Advisors based in Wellington and a former refugee. Daniel wants people to know that refugees are more than the label: “For me, it’s important to highlight World Refugee Day because it gives us the opportunity to commemorate our stories and our bravery.” We will continue to introduce you to members of our team through future editions of this newsletter, as well as giving you some snapshots of the wider work happening in the Office of Ethnic Communities.

Ngā mihi nui
Anusha Guler
Executive Director, Office of Ethnic Communities

Some snapshots of our work

New initiative: Multi-lingual Information Network

We will be launching a new project next week: the Multi-lingual information Network. Over the COVID-19 lockdown period, the videos we produced in over 30 languages received good feedback from our communities. We are keen to test another way of quickly getting important information deep into our communities in a wide range of languages.

Next week we will be issuing an invitation for multi-lingual people to express interest in becoming a volunteer information facilitator. These will be people who are willing to take messages which the Office of Ethnic Communities generates, translate them, and send them on quickly through their own networks.

We want this multi-lingual information network to complement existing communication channels – to add something extra. To be successful, we will be asking for your help so we can test, refine, and evolve this concept to ensure it adds value for communities. 

We will be issuing the invitation far and wide, including on our social media channels and through our community engagement teams. You will also be able to find it on the Resources page of our website from Monday, 6 July.

Post-Budget meeting with Ethnic Communities leaders

On 10 June 2020, the Minister for Ethnic Communities, Hon Jenny Salesa, and the Minister of Finance, Hon Grant Robertson, came together for a post-Budget discussion with leaders from our ethnic communities and faith and inter-faith leaders in the Southern Region. The meeting gave community leaders the chance to hear first-hand more about the various initiatives planned for COVID-19 recovery. Community leaders also shared ideas and asked questions about how these initiatives will benefit ethnic communities.

This was the first of two Budget 2020 Rebuilding Together meetings with the Minister for Ethnic Communities. The second meeting will be with leaders from the North Island will be held in early July 2020.

COVID-19 information updates

• Assistance for foreign nationals in serious hardship: The Department of Internal Affairs is working with New Zealand Red Cross to deliver in-kind assistance to foreign nationals experiencing serious hardship due to COVID-19 to help them meet their basic, urgent and immediate needs. This is delivering on the $37.6 million Assistance for Foreign Nationals Impacted by COVID-19 programme announced by the Government on 16 June 2020. Those eligible for support are foreign nationals in New Zealand who are experiencing serious hardship, have exhausted other options, and have no current access to a flight home.
  
  The Programme will run from 1 July 2020 for three months. It is intended that at the end of this period, people will be able to return to their home country or have secured alternative means of support.
  
  For more information and to apply, visit foreignnationals.services.govt.nz or call the Red Cross on 0800 REDCROSS (0800 733 276).
   

• A free helpline is available for all New Zealand businesses. You can get advice and access to Government business support; advice on what Alert Level 1 means for your business; HR and general business advice; access to online resources and webinars; and connections to business advisory services.
   
• During the recovery phase for COVID-19, financial pressure will be a reality for many people. The Government COVID-19 website has a page about the financial support available.

World Refugee Day: Meet Daniel Gamboa

We will be introducing members of our team through this newsletter. First up, we would like you to meet Daniel Gamboa, Senior Advisor based in Wellington and former refugee. Daniel’s journey to New Zealand was not easy. He grew up in Colombia, where a civil war between the government and various paramilitary and guerrilla groups has been waged since 1964.

Daniel and his mother fled to Ecuador when Daniel was 12, and they were given refugee status on arrival. But life in Ecuador was difficult: no one wanted to employ a single mother and they were discriminated against for being Colombian. “It was because we looked different, because we spoke differently.”

After six years in Ecuador, he and his mother were resettled by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, in New Zealand in 2012. Daniel and his mother had never even heard of New Zealand when they were told the country was interested in accepting them.

Shortly after landing in Auckland, Daniel and his mother were resettled in Wellington. They didn’t speak English, but Daniel says it was a relief to able to walk around freely and breathe in the clean air. “I decided I really wanted to immerse myself in the language and culture and give back to New Zealand,” says Daniel. He took English courses before enrolling in university, where he studied Political Science and Geography.

It wasn’t until after he took a year-long leadership course run by the Office of Ethnic Communities (then the Office of Ethnic Affairs) that he realised what he wanted to do.

With the skills he learned, Daniel helped start the New Zealand National Refugee Youth Council (NZNRYC) which works to support refugee background youth as they adapt to life in New Zealand. His work with the NZNRYC led him to speak at the UN in Geneva about the importance of empowering refugees in 2016. Daniel later left his role with the NZNRYC to allow more space for new young people to lead the way.

When he first spotted the listing for a Senior Diversity and Engagement Advisor role at the Office of Ethnic Communities last year, Daniel says, “I thought, ‘this is the dream job. I can support my communities, I can support my people.’”

He started at the Office in October 2019. Since then, he’s worked on a range of projects, including the Office of Ethnic Communities COVID-19 response, which saw the creation of videos in various languages sharing key information about the Alert Levels for ethnic communities around the country. 

Other Updates

• On 17 June, members of our Southern team were in Timaru to help welcome two Syrian refugee families to the town. These are the first families to arrive in Timaru since it was named as a settlement location. You can read more about this special occasion in this Timaru Herald article.
   
• TVNZ is calling for New Zealanders to scour their homes in the search for treasures, objects, taonga that have special significance to New Zealand and our history over the last 100 years. They would like to receive submissions from a range of ethnic communities to ensure the show is an accurate representation of the diverse make-up of New Zealand. You can find more information on the National Treasures website.
   
• Many people have been using social media over the COVID-19 pandemic to record their experiences and stories from their communities from this extraordinary time. The National Library has put together some guidance on how you can preserve this content so it is available for you and your whānau into the future.