A fierce advocate for multicultural communities over the past 35 years, Maria Dimopolous still remembers as a child watching her mother struggle to defend her with broken English.
In primary school, she and her brother were accused of bringing a head lice outbreak to school, even though they didn't have any lice.
"To watch [my mother] in her broken English trying to defend us and then for us to then experience what it felt like to have a parent that was powerless, that's really hard stuff," she said.
Maria, who was on Tuesday night named as winner of this year's Premier’s Award for Community Harmony at the annual Victorian Multicultural Commission (VMC) Awards, came to Australia with her family from Greece when she was eight.
Like many migrant children, she and her brother faced racism being the only two kids at their school from ethnic backgrounds.
"Teachers were just condoning all sorts of racist behaviour," she said.
"[It was] a litany of abuses and racism. Being targeted ridiculed and humiliated at every opportunity. I think that as a result, we both absolutely hated primary school."
Her mother, who was a textile factory worker that spoke six languages fluently, was "regularly exploited for those linguistic skills when the factory required".
Now in her 50s, the co-founder of social justice consultancy Myriad Kofkin Global has dedicated her life to representing multicultural communities, becoming recognised as an international expert in the intersection of diversity, gender equality and the law.
Having influenced change in all levels of government — advocating to promote women's rights, eliminate family violence and increase cross-cultural awareness — she told the ABC it was her experiences with injustice that motivated her.
"You can't see discrimination and injustice, and unsee it," said Maria.
A total of 61 outstanding Victorian individuals, businesses and organisations were honoured for their contributions to multicultural Victoria at the VMC awards during a ceremony at Government House in Melbourne.
The awards formally recognise those whose outstanding efforts build cross-cultural understanding and support Victorians with migrant, refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds.
'Advocacy work made me more confident'
Zainab Abou-Eid, 24, and Altaf Hussein, 25, who were named as the two VMC Youth Leadership award winners on Tuesday, both said more work still needed to be done advocating for the interests of culturally and linguistically diverse communities.
While her day job is working as personal injury lawyer, Zainab spends much of her spare time fighting to eradicate Islamophobia through advocacy.
She said entering the "real world" was a huge culture shock after she graduated from an Islamic high school in 2015, where she had little interaction with non-Muslims.
"As soon as I left high school, [I noticed] that look that people would give you and that misunderstanding that people have about the hijab," she said.
"So I quickly realised that something needed to be done."
She said she was often confronted with questions about Islam, and while sometimes people were kind, other times they were not.
"Because I have the hijab on automatically [there is] a question like, 'tell me where are you from?' So that in itself was advocacy," Zainab said.
She told the ABC being a resilient advocate for Muslim youth had helped strengthen her faith.
"My advocacy work made me more confident. It made me keep my scarf [hijab] on."
"And also it made me not only educate myself but educate others about it."
She said she couldn't be more proud to receive recognition from the VMC.
"I hope that me receiving this award will demonstrate [to] especially young women that wear the hijab, that if you get into advocacy, not only will you be appreciated, but you can all make a difference," she said.
'We all have experienced war'
The founder and chairman of the Victorian Afghan Youth Association, Altaf received the VMC Youth Achievement award for his work around mental health in his community.
He wants to empower his community to get into social work and the mental health sector, rather than striving to become a doctor which he says is what most parents in the community encourage their children to do.
His motivations to start conversations about mental health began when he came to Australia from Afghanistan seven years ago.
He quickly realised there was a stigma around mental health issues among newly-arrived people from the Hazara community.
"We all have experienced war, every second family has lost a loved one in the war, or in a bombing, especially the Hazara community," he said.
"So I tried to help and give back to the community."
VMC chair Vivienne Nguen, who came to Australia as refugee from Vietnam in 1983, said the awards were "critical".
"Here in Victoria, we have a population of 6.5 million according to the 2021 ABS census, and 52 per cent of us have at least one parent born overseas," she said.
"So we are actually not the minority anymore."
