Samia Baho is brewing coffee behind a food counter filled with za’atar flatbreads, spinach and cheese pastries, and baklavas.
Her phone buzzes frequently. A tertiary education provider is hoping to refer someone to Baho’s volunteer-run migrant women’s support service in Sunshine, in Melbourne’s west. Most days she also receives a call from a woman experiencing domestic violence who needs urgent help.
“Everybody knows my number,” she says.
Baho founded the Centre of Advancing Women, which helps refugee and migrant women find employment, alongside family violence and mental health support, relationship counselling and workshops in cooking and finance skills.
After arriving in Australia in the 1970s as an 18-year-old refugee from Eritrea, Baho launched the centre in 2020 to support African diaspora women. It’s now relied on by women from a range of migrant backgrounds, as well as second-generation Australians.
For Baho, who was raised by a single mother, providing support for women to gain employment and become independent is at the heart of everything the grassroots organisation does.
The centre’s cafe, Morning Mix, which has a beauty salon upstairs, offers women a chance to develop customer service experience.
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“This place is also a drop-in, every one of us will come and we whinge about what’s happening in our life, and we learn from each other,” Baho says.
Having arrived in Australia fluent in four languages – Tigrinya, Tigre, Arabic and English – Baho began working as an interpreter for the immigration department, meeting African migrants at the airport and helping them settle in their new country.
“That built a lot of my relationships with people,” she says.
Baho began to form long-term connections with the communities she supported as she helped them navigate the process of accessing support services.
“When you’ve been the one that build that initial contact, you always be proud of what to do but also you feel responsible,” she says.
In the following years, Baho undertook studies in social work and sexual and reproductive health, worked for multicultural health and domestic violence organisations, and helped train bilingual childcare workers.
Building on her community services work, she began to notice the employment barriers that migrant and refugee women faced – even those who had lived in Australia for decades. These included a lack of financial resources, language barriers and systemic racism.
The centre’s training and employment pathways program – designed in response to hurdles refugee and migrant women face in accessing mainstream education and training – has supported 27 women, mostly single mothers facing domestic violence, with 80% transitioning to paid employment.
“I think employment is one of the greatest ways to empower women,” Baho says.
“You’re building someone to be financially independent to build their life, and that’s the only way you will do well.”
Baho is supported by about 30 volunteers, although the centre receives no ongoing funding.
Salma Warsame, who volunteers for the centre by helping with grant writing and communication, says the centre is helping to fill a critical gap.
“Not many spaces like this exist for us,” she says. “A lot of the times, people find it hard to navigate this system in Australia because it’s unfamiliar.”
When the Covid-19 pandemic began, Baho receive an influx of phone calls from migrant women experiencing domestic violence and struggling to access clear information about the pandemic in their own language. Baho helped deliver food to migrant families, including those locked down in public housing towers.
Baho says migrant and refugee women are still calling the centre after having trouble accessing support from mainstream domestic violence organisations, sometimes for not meeting the criteria for serious risk.
Often they have knocked on the door of five other services before they arrive at the centre. Sometimes they do not meet the criteria for government-funded legal aid and turn to private lawyers, only to end up in debt.
A survivor of domestic violence, who requested anonymity for her safety, met Baho after fleeing from her violent partner late last year.
At 23, she found herself two months pregnant and sleeping in her car with her puppy after being turned away from domestic violence crisis accommodation due to not meeting the urgent risk threshold.
She began making calls to homeless and domestic violence support services and rang Baho about 3am one morning. A few hours later, Baho returned her call.
“She said, ‘Come to the centre. I’ll help you out.’ She helped me with food, accommodation and moral and emotional support,” she recalls.
The woman, who is Muslim, says she felt she could not share the news about her pregnancy with her family and friends.
“The fact that she gave me that support, it really meant a lot. She treated me like her own child – literally. It just gave me that safety.
“She cares on that deeper level.”
• In Australia, the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. In the UK, call the national domestic abuse helpline on 0808 2000 247, or visit Women’s Aid. In the US, the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). Other international helplines may be found via www.befrienders.org.
