Refugee Conference to Launch Inspirational Book

Refugee Conference to Launch Inspirational Book

A book featuring 23 exceptional stories from former refugees now living in New Zealand is just one element of the AUT Refugee Education Conference next week.

The conference has a theme of education and includes research papers as well as workshops and papers on best practice.

The book, Refugee Stories, is a compilation of stories related by the refugee writers themselves, at either the AUT Refugee Symposium (2010) or at the AUT Refugee Health and Wellbeing Conference in 2009.

The stories were compiled and edited by Maria Hayward, the manager of the AUT Centre for Refugee Education, who also facilitated the workshops to help individuals with the transcription of the stories.

"The stories are, in places, grueling, but they are, by no means, solely concerned with pain and suffering. Each one conveys resilience, strength, compassion, endurance, hope and - for all of us – inspiration for overcoming adversity. "

During the course of the two-day conference researchers from both AUT and other universities across New Zealand will be presenting including AUT staff member Ineke Crezee who will be presenting a paper on ‘Interpreting in refugee contexts- implications for interpreters’.

Keynote speakers for the conference are Richard Towle, the UNHCR Regional Pacific Representative, Dr Melika Yassin Skeikh-Eldin the manager of the Settlement Delivery Support Service in Melbourne, Australia and Mitchell Pham, a Vietnamese refugee, who says he was “born in Vietnam but made in New Zealand”.

For more on the conference head to: http://www.aut.ac.nz/community/aut-in-the-community/centre-for-refugee-education/refugee-education-conference-2011

The conference is being held on the AUT North Shore campus on November 28 and 29.

The book launch is on Monday November 28 from 4.15-6.15, Main theatre, Conference Centre, AUT North Shore Akoranga campus.

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