The women’s friendship café at Pakenham’s Living and Learning Centre is the latest of nine to have sprung up across Melbourne’s south-east. VICTORIA STONE-MEADOWS met the women who are driving the vision forward.
“I had always thought that bad things happen in countries and thought ‘why didn’t people stand up?’, but then I saw bad things happening in Australia and I thought I had to stand up and do something.”
A new community movement is bringing women all over Victoria together and strengthening the bonds of community.
The first women’s friendship cafe popped up in Hampton Park in 2012 with the ninth cafe opening recently in Pakenham.
The cafes are a place for women of all backgrounds, ages, creeds, and education levels to come together and share their experiences to create bonds and bolster their community’s spirit.
The idea was the brain-child of Elaine Smith who wanted to help migrant and refugee women build community connections and support each other.
“I moved to Melbourne to work with refugee families and when I started that, I realised that migrant women as well as refugees have similar needs,” she said.
“I wanted to help women’s groups that can be inclusive and address women’s issues.”
Ms Smith received a very modest grant from the City of Casey to establish the Hampton Park women’s friendship cafe and since then, the concept has taken off.
Her passion for helping refugee and migrant families has been a constant in her life but was ignited by the refugee policies of the Howard government.
“The biggest catalyst for me to get moving was probably the refugee issues that happened around 2001 and the Tampa affair,” she said.
“I had always thought that bad things happen in countries and thought ‘why didn’t people stand up?’, but then I saw bad things happening in Australia and I thought I had to stand up and do something.”
After opening her home in New South Wales to refugee families and working hard to improving communities there, Ms Smith moved to Melbourne in 2008 to a booming migrant population in the City of Casey.
“I arrived in Melbourne and started making connectors and volunteering with SCAAB, Wellsprings for Women, Catholic Care, and AMES and gradually got myself with a little handbag of skills,” she said.
It was with her handbag of skills that Ms Smith started the women’s friendship cafe initiative and attracted the attention of volunteer Jolene Stewart.
Ms Stewart became involved with the initiative through her studies in community development.
For 31 years, Ms Stewart worked in the banking and finance sector but has found her true passion in the women’s friendship cafe helping other women find and maintain connections.
“I have been moving all my life and Australia is my home and I find that the community has helped me with my own life, and I thought ‘why can’t I help someone as well?’” she said.
“I can’t change the world but I can give a little helping hand.”
Ms Stewart said her own experiences have informed her world view when it comes to the way women are seen in differing societies and the needs all women share.
“What I saw, from my own experience, I found that women are not given a fair go and not included in different ways,” she said.
“They are often the giver, the person gives up their career for their family and is not appreciated.
“Most women are left behind and find they are isolated when their children grow.
“My idea in this is that women need to be included and need no have friends.
“Even being a mother myself I had to realise one day my child will go and I don’t want to be holding on once they leave.”
The women’s friendship cafe has also the attention of younger women with Monash University student Rebecca Jones volunteering at the new Pakenham cafe.
“I’ve been an assist to them helping promote the cafe, doing contact sheets, funding potential volunteers, and all the nitty gritty stuff,” she said.
Ms Jones’ volunteering expertise comes from teaching English in Thailand and her enthusiasm to jump into a different form of placement than her classmates.
“I know a few other friends who are doing placement but I am a part of this and I am really helping and the ladies are asking for my opinion,” she said.
The women’s friendship cafe is an open forum for women of all types but it seems the volunteers who run the cafes get as much out of it as the participants.
“It is that little quiet happy place women can come together and find what the answer to their next steps,” Ms Smith said.
“Everyone here is different but we can come along and be greeted with friendship and find other women.”
While the cafe is run by the dedicated and hardworking volunteers, the plan is to have the women of the cafe take over the reins and for it to become a 100 per cent community based outlet.
“It is a launching place for people – that’s the joy of it and the difficulty of it,” Ms Smith said.
“As soon as someone has the confidence and skills they were looking for, of course they are moving on, they have to make a living.”
Ms Stewart said the cafe lives on the strength of the women involved and as the women get stronger so does the cafe and the wider community.
“The success depends on the people who want to maintain it,” she said.
“We can only help them with what they want, we can’t force them into projects, but we haven’t had to either.
“These women want to succeed and the beauty is here they can help each other do that.”
