Voices Shaping the
Sustaining youth programs
Download 1.05 Mb.
|
Sustaining youth programsMuslim youth have access to a variety of development and support programs. These include mosque‐based religious instruction, Muslim youth and recreation organizations, multi‐ethnic locality‐based youth centres, school and government outreach and support services, and mainstream programs serving a wider variety of youth. Community workers and counsellors point to the value of such projects, especially those that support young Muslims to engage with the wider society. They note that the National Action Plan (NAP) only came about as a government reaction to a perception of failing integration among Muslim young men, as demonstrated in the so‐called Cronulla riots of December 2005. Yet as a number of stakeholders pointed out, the NAP schemes have come to an end, with no sign of future specially targeted funding. Muslim community projects, funded through social order sources, have also come to a halt. They point to very successful projects that rose and fell in a period of one or two years, as initial pump‐priming funds were never followed by longer‐term program support. Indeed some Muslim community workers argue that securing state and local funding has become more difficult because of perceptions the NAP funds would cover everything ‘Muslim’ in a locality. Yet Muslim‐safe projects are vital to ensuring youth have supportive environments to work through issues of concern to them. One worker reflected that: …there aren’t positive ways of expressing that anger. At the moment, like through the arts I think it’s always a really important way. Through the music, through dance, through theatre, through writing and so forth, expression, painting. … I remember going to Europe and every municipality had a cultural centre where kids would go and learn for free one form of art. And you could almost use any form of art to express yourself and your anger and to tell your story in one way or another. We don’t have that here. And a lot of the kids who… a lot of the women, where do they express a lot of their stuff? … If you’re not interested in sport you’ve got nothing where you can go and meet other kids from your community, in terms of your locality, to meet kids from other groups. So you’ll go back to your mosque, or you’ll go to your church, or you’ll go to your soccer club and you meet people of the same groups. But there’s no … there’s very little cross interaction between people of the different groups in a common setting. As is apparent from that quote, locales that provide opportunities for expression and interaction with others are needed. Youth programs provide a critical role for community development. Yet there are real questions as to how they should relate to families. We know from the survey material that young Muslim Australians, in the main, turn to friends, family elders, siblings and cousins, religious advisors and web based forums and chat rooms for advice and information on personal issues and problems. In the consultations, some workers see parents as overprotective, the family as a potential constraint, the members of which have to be drawn slowly and gently into the idea their son or daughter (especially daughter) might be entering a difficult but exciting space. … Without the parents we can’t do anything. And – I mean, we’ve got some parents who will say – I’ll help out with this or that activity. And – even just if one parent you know – one parent can bring a few youth together – say they need transport, that one kid can be another five. And they all come together you know – in this big van that every Arab has. So I think, that one parent does make a lot of difference. We get things donated to us. We’ve had iftars [communal meals] in Ramadan and … the pizza shop donated their pizzas. So I think, we’ll build the relationship with parents and that’s the only way we can succeed. One community worker who works with a range of young women from different backgrounds, talks about her approach working with young Muslim Australians and migrant families in general. She highlights the need for culturally appropriate, culturally sensitive programs that are perceived as safe and where trust can grow between parents and organizers. Equally important is the need to celebrate milestones for young people. ‘Overprotective’ parents can become the best supporters. She presents the model in full: Yeah, but we also didn't push. If I had gone to the parents ‘Right then, I’m going to pick your daughters up and take them to a mainstream football club with Australians and they're going to play Sunday games’ – No way! But it was so small and it was safe, and it was something the parents could conceptualize. And it wasn’t too far from home so if they ever wanted to drive there for any reason, they could. … we were always in communication with the parents about what was happening. We got some funding and we said that we want to run some body image stuff with your daughters and talk to them about healthy eating and relationships. And a lot of the relationship conversations was about how they should communicate with their parents, because there's a lot of conflict going on. So the parents loved that we wanted to do that, ‘Yep, go ahead, do it.’ So then, if we needed the daughters’ extra time, they were happy for that, because they knew exactly what we were doing with them, where we were. We were picking them up and we were driving them. You know – just the way my parents when I was growing up wanted someone to pick me up if they weren’t going to drive me themselves – they wanted to know exactly where I was, who I was with and what I was doing. So we offered that. And then, then we built that up to then ‘We’re taking the girls on a camp.’ And it was, none of them had ever been away from home. It was just because it was me and I was going to be there. It was all girls and they knew exactly the content of the camp and they were happy with it, and all of that stuff. And in that time we would have dinners to celebrate. Anytime there was a milestone or, we would have dinners. We started organising tournaments with other girls and the parents could come to those tournaments and they started coming more and more and watching their girls play. And the parents would come ‘Oh, my daughter’s actually really good at soccer’ and I’d say, ‘yeah, she really is’. So then, two years into it, the parents asked us ‘Can my daughter... look you know... this is great. But it’s not real. Can my daughter play real soccer?’ So it came from the parents. ‘Can you organize so my daughter’s actually playing proper football?’ And it came from the fathers, because they're far more fanatic about football than the mothers. And they were so proud, at the end of the day, of their little girl playing such good soccer. Some community workers stressed that Government has to come to grips with the consequences of policy within the different tiers and that it has a responsibility to bring different parts of the Australian community together to solve problems. What you really need is the balance that comes at the lower level of government, state and local government, where it says we’ve got local collective problem together that we collectively need to deal with. We don’t have the ‘Islamic problem’ we’ve got an Australian problem, Australian issues, challenges. So collectively bringing the different communities together to deal with specific issues and getting different answers from different perspectives. That way, the integration issue, the ‘us’ and ‘them’ type of divides aren’t there as much. I think that approach has been much more effective at state level over and over again, whether it’s for youth or for the community. I think you need the balance of the two. You need certain communication with the Muslims alone, but you certainly need to bring it all together with all the communities together. Otherwise, you’re isolating and stigmatising one particular community. A number of community‐funded projects have begun to appear mainly in Sydney and Melbourne, where Muslim professionals (older) and university students (younger) contribute to community‐ based initiatives, some of which are spontaneous and others that are more structured. Though they soon require government support as they grow, some have received short‐term and one‐off funding for their projects. Community initiatives include artistic and recreational workshops and events such as poetry and performance nights, horse riding days and camping. Other initiatives have included the drug and alcohol street work and cross‐cultural counselling services conducted by such organisations as the ‘Mission of Hope’. Consultations highlighted the importance of specialist cross‐cultural skills offered by Muslim professionals. The consultations with key stakeholders working in the field with young Muslim Australians or their families highlighted the importance of tutorial programs to help with school work, as well as mentoring and leadership programs to help youth achieve their potential. Such programs introduce positive trajectories for young people and especially for those who may be isolated or less engaged. Stakeholders suggested a combination of programs for young Muslim Australians, namely those that are run within Muslim organizations, mosques or youth groups, through to programs, which are run as partnerships in collaboration with mainstream organizations and community members (e.g. AFL community events). Both Muslim‐specific and more generalist but inclusive programs were highlighted playing an important role in youth support projects. A repeated concern voiced by stakeholders in all three fieldwork regions was that services and funding programs (especially generic and multicultural projects) should be inclusive of Muslim community members and especially young Muslim Australians. A strong recommendation from professionals is that these programs should seek out Muslim specialists where they exist and when needed. When dealing with areas such as family breakdown or mental health, overstretched services and the lack of appropriate support systems for young Muslims may mean they become even more marginalised. Additionally mosques, community centres, and web based media spaces were mentioned as important sites for the development of new Muslim youth projects. Stakeholders mentioned that mosque organizations, Muslim youth groups and other community‐based organizations could benefit greatly by learning from established organizations, churches, and charities within mainstream society. While structures exist in and around these bodies, they do not tend to have strong infrastructure bases or systems to adequately support young people and important community functions. It was suggested that there is a need to provide different points of engagement for young Muslim Australians, opening culturally appropriate spaces for support. Programs that encourage Muslim youth expression through new technologies and media, or through story telling, and which facilitate the transfer of cultural assets and knowledge, are identified as having strong potential. Sports teams and recreational activities provide opportunities for socialising and friendship networks and support. Some arts initiatives have also proven very successful, being able to play a powerful role in building social capital through community development. A number of projects do that, by seeking parental trust and working with families gaining their support and endorsement. In the main these programs provide successful and encouraging forms of engagement and forums for expression for young Muslim Australians. Directory: sites -> default -> files -> documents -> 01 2014 documents -> Ace abi catair customs and Trade Automated Interface Requirements documents -> Mobile audio/video recording systems documents -> The south australian government gazette documents -> All public acts appearing in this gazette are to be considered official, and obeyed as such documents -> Union interparlementaire inter-parliamentary union 01 2014 -> Muslim Voices – Hopes and aspirations of Muslim Australians Centre for Muslim Minorities & Islam Policy Studies 01 2014 -> Prepared by: Kais Al‐Momani Nour Dados Marion Maddox Amanda Wise C 01 2014 -> Editors: Kerry Download 1.05 Mb. Share with your friends:
|