Tuesday, 5 March 2024

North-Eastern Metropolitan Region

Richard WELCH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (13:03): (716) My question is for the Minister for Youth. Last week I had the pleasure of sitting down with Abdi Mohamed from Somali Voice Victoria based in my electorate in the suburb of Ivanhoe. Somali Voice provide important social work, immigration support and legal and general advice for Somali youth, women and families, especially addressing some of the specific challenges of refugee communities. They are keen to progress as a community and have expressed to me the desire to build on their engagement and integration with the broader Australian society. They have concerns that they have identified a gap in connecting youth to specific services, and they wish to come up with their own solutions and address those. The question is: will the minister sit down with Abdi and the Somali Voice team and work with them on some of the solutions that they have come up with?