Amena - A vulnerable refugee

Amena is an intelligent, married refugee woman with four children.

Her husband is in and out of the picture, but she says he’s highly controlling and has ‘spies’ in the community to report back on what she’s doing when he’s away.

She doesn’t understand New Zealand’s benefit system very well, she doesn’t really know what is available, and she is not used to thinking of benefits or services as an option for support. She sticks closely to people within her own community.

She is constantly afraid for her own health and safety, and for her children. Her oppressive environment means she can’t go out and get a full-time job – it’s not usual for women in her cultural community to work a lot. She is desperate to find ways of increasing her income because they are so poor, but her husband only allows her to work a few hours a week, and only in jobs of which he approves.

In her words

"The big difficulty is the culture. If my husband knows what I’m doing, he will go and use the whole community against me."

"Without his permission, I can’t do it [go into business to generate income]. If I go and have like a lady friend [from my community] and the lady is agreeing with her husband [that she can] work with me, that still is not acceptable for my husband cos he saying ‘I’m here. I’m alive. I not agree, why you go?"

"When he leave, he don’t care about me how I should survive or not. He knows I can’t leave him because of my children. He just took advantage from my weakness."

Amena’s strengths

• She is keen to build her income by developing some work skills
• She has a good grasp of the English language
• She wants to make the most of new opportunities available to her in New Zealand
• She is very focused on her family and wants her children to make the most of their opportunities
• She is resilient and motivated although she has experienced hardship and trauma growing up
• She is very involved in her community.

How can we support Amena to thrive in her community?

• Find an internal community champion or supporter (including informal/formal networks) who:
  • understands the cultural context and norms in her society
  • preferably speaks the same language
  • specialises in building relationships and trust with refugee communities
  • provides advocacy or navigation with other organisations e.g. talking to family violence experts on her behalf
  • recognises that she suffers a lot of crises and stress which prevents her from having the right frame of mind to deal with issues
  • will provide her with nurturing to feel safe before she can plan and learn new things about building financial resilience
  • specialises in resettlement or refugee services for targeted support.
• Provide coaching to identify that the type of violence she suffers is not appropriate or ok in New Zealand.
• Develop a safety plan that builds financial resilience.
• Provide counselling for the whole family.
• Develop a culturally-appropriate social enterprise business model that she could be a part of.
• Access community-developed programmes that will work with the men to help their families.