To our communities: Thank you for opening your doors and trusting us with your voices

By Hellen Kibowen, Stakeholder Engagement and Project Manager

Hellen Kibowen is the Stakeholder Engagement and Project Manager at the Australian Multicultural Health Collaborative, an initiative of the Federation of Ethnic Communities Council Australia (FECCA), established in 2023. Hellen has worked at FECCA since 2021.

Since joining the Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Councils of Australia (FECCA), I have worked closely with multicultural communities across Australia through community engagement and advocacy activities. More recently, I was part of engagement sessions in Western Australia, Tasmania, South Australia and New South Wales.

Across these conversations, one thing continues to stand out to me time and time again: the importance of trust, relationships and community voices in shaping policy, service design and advocacy at a national level.

One community member once said to me:

‘It feels great that you did not forget us. That you keep coming back to listen, and to take our voices to Canberra.’

These words have stayed with me since my first community engagement through FECCA’s multicultural health and advocacy work. It was just after COVID-19 restrictions eased, when we were finally able to travel again. We visited a small community in the outer suburbs of Adelaide. At the time, FECCA was the first organisation to engage with them, and they had just received their first grant to support vaccination efforts.

Three years on, we are still going back.

We have seen communities grow in confidence, in number, and in their willingness to engage.

What once felt like distance from ‘Canberra’ has, over time, become familiarity. We are now welcomed into community spaces and sometimes, even into moments of deep cultural and spiritual significance.

On one visit in Perth during the holy month of Ramadhan, we expected the community to be busy with festivities and family gatherings, but when I reached out, the response was immediate: ‘Come. Let us break fast together.’ Despite full schedules and ongoing celebrations, they made space for us. People choose to meet, talk and share, not because they have to, but because they want to be heard.

And what they share matters.

It is not just stories about services or systems. It is the lived reality behind them. Something as simple as enrolling a child into school might sound straightforward, but for a newly arrived family navigating an unfamiliar system, language barriers, and cost pressures, it can feel overwhelming.

In other communities, we have seen people arrive, settle, and build lives. We have watched individuals who were once new and unsure now raising families, supporting others, and stepping into leadership. In many ways, we have grown alongside them.

This work is personal.

As a migrant, I see parts of my own journey reflected in these stories – the resilience, the challenges, the quiet determination. It is what fuels my work and why I show up each day.

Trust is not given lightly. It is built over time through consistency, respect, and genuine engagement. And with that trust comes honesty. Sometimes what we hear is difficult. Sometimes it is confronting. But it is necessary.

Because these voices shape our work – work that has the potential to influence what governments do.

Through the work of the Australian Multicultural Health Collaborative, community engagement is not a checkbox; it is central to how we approach policy and advocacy. At its core, our approach is grounded in collaboration, inclusion, and respect. Every voice is welcomed, across languages, cultures, ages, genders, and abilities. We honour the values and lived experiences that each person brings. The insights communities have shape the work of the Australian Multicultural Health Collaborative, ensuring that their challenges and aspirations are reflected in the decisions that affect them.

After every engagement, I leave reminded of why this work matters. But I am also reminded of how much work still needs to be done.

Many of the issues communities raise today are the same ones we heard years ago: barriers to accessing healthcare, language barriers, difficulty navigating complex systems, long wait times, and services that do not always reflect the cultural realities of the people they are designed for.

Families continue to rely heavily on community leaders, bilingual workers, and loved ones to navigate systems that should be easier to understand and access. The languages and faces may change, but the challenges remain.

Progress has been made, but there is still a long way to go.