Tales of finding freedom and family.

Hear stories and enjoy the opportunity to ask and engage with local community members with lived refugee experiences from different corners all around the world.

Join in for a shared dinner. Welcoming Community Dinners are an opportunity to gather together to share food, fun and friendship. Bring along a plate of food to share, and enjoy a multicultural dinner with friends, new and old.

At Cheltenham Community Centre, for this year’s refugee week themed ‘Finding Freedom: Family’ , we’ve partnered with Multicultural Communities Council of SA, Welcoming Australia, and One Culture Football to deliver the ‘Refugee week Living Library’.

A live firsthand retelling of refugee stories from around the world; witness personal accounts of how people from refugee backgrounds contribute positively to our community and how unfortunate circumstances across the globe have led to situations that deprive these contributions by said individuals from the very contexts from where they once had to flee.

Inspired by ‘The Human Library’, an international organisation and movement having its origins in the city of Copenhagen, Denmark, in the year 2000; this event seeks to challenge people's perceptions refugees of the refugee experience by providing the opportunity for open conversation with those having lived experience most of us would not usually encounter except vicariously through mainstream media stereotypes.

Using libraries as an analogy, living libraries lend people rather than traditional books with their collections consequently featuring individuals who have "experienced prejudice, social exclusion or stigma", and whereby participants, ‘borrowers’ can interact with ‘books’ to learn about other people and challenge their own presuppositions and unconscious biases.

Book your spot today.