Learning: Cobram Anglican Grammar School students Madison McDiarmid (Year 11) and Tom Nye (Year 6) with Wendy Rowan in front of Cobram Community House where Ms Rowan gave a speech on her work with refugees.
Photo by
Gabriel Garcia
Cobram Community House was packed to the rafters on Thursday, June 22, as Cobram local Wendy Rowan gave a speech describing her work with refugees.
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The event was part of Refugee Week celebrations held at Cobram Community House.
Ms Rowan has been an English teacher for the past 40 years working in primary schools and as an English second language teacher in both Shepparton and Cobram.
A Christian woman, Ms Rowan has worked in refugee camps and orphanages in Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya and India as part of church groups.
Ms Rowan said she worked in Mozambique in the early ’90s while the civil war was raging, helping build a well and providing much-needed basic supplies such as grain and clothes.
She also visited northern Nigeria, a place notorious for attacks on Christians by terrorist groups such as Boko Haram, to write a book about graduates from an Australian-run college in Nigeria.
Asked why she wanted to travel to help refugees and orphans, Ms Rowan said she thought it was the right thing to do.
“I was inspired by just wanting to be able to help. I was with other people from different denominations and we just wanted to help in some way,” she said.
Ms Rowan’s last trip to Africa was in 2014 when she was in western Kenya assisting Aids orphans.
Packed to the rafters: Cobram Community House was packed with students, residents, council staff and staff from local businesses for Refugee Week.
Photo by
Gabriel Garcia
Asked what the best part of helping refugees and migrants overseas was, Ms Rowan said it was the feeling of making a difference.
“Of course, when you’ve got thousands of people who are desperate, it’s only a drop in the bucket. But it’s being able to give them hope, encouragement and just to help people that have got nobody to help them,” Ms Rowan said.
In Australia, Ms Rowan has spent her time teaching English to refugees in Cobram and Shepparton.
“It was a wonderful privilege with some of the cultures in Shepparton, some of the women weren’t allowed to go to school so they’re starting with no, no background in their own language, let alone English,” Ms Rowan said.
“It’s such a joy to work with them, to befriend them, to encourage them and to give them some help with being able to navigate being in a new country.”
Working from CCH in Cobram, Ms Rowan also taught Iraqi refugees English in the early 2000s.
Ms Rowan said Refugee Week was a time to appreciate the freedoms we had in the West and to empathise and recognise the plight of others.
“Refugee Week means that we’re focusing on people who have nothing. Who have been displaced by war, or famine or Aids or whatever the circumstances and fleeing to find a better life for their family,” she said.
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