Afreem has lived in Australia for 21 years after coming to Melbourne as young child with her five siblings and her parents from Sudan, via three years living in Egypt. She moved to Sydney to advance her career and is currently completing her Bachelor of Business at Western Sydney University. Her background is in retail and hospitality and she has also undertaken some accounting which complements her new role as the Success Works Business Program Coordinator.
One of the key benefits of her new role at Success Works is realising that most of the staff working there are women with lived experience. She knows first-hand what it takes to turn your life around:
“It is pretty amazing to work with women who society looks down on them because of their past challenges ….and knowing that I myself have come from a similar background it is definitely a privilege.“
Afreem says there were challenges coming to live in Australia and growing up in a society that wasn’t really tailored to immigrants, especially those coming from Africa. She admits that she did not receive much guidance and as a teenager ended up associating with the wrong crowd. She was fortunate that she didn’t go to prison, but her criminal record has hung over her ever since. Moving to Sydney meant moving away from people who were ‘walking the wrong path’ and gave her a better understanding of how she had ‘leaned on them’ in ways that weren’t good.
Her family and her Christian faith have helped her steer in the direction to be more responsible to herself and those around her. She also realises that it is important to be able reach out and asking for help and accept that help can come from others. For a long time, she lived with the idea that her problems were her own to sort out. It was not until she met a woman who offered to be a personal mentor that she realised that her experiences were not unique, and it was good to share some of her life stories. For this reason, Afreem attests to the value of mentors as they have helped her not only in her own personal development, but she also had a mentor while she was a candidate in the Success Work employment program. Afreem credits her Success Works mentor with helping her build interview skills and confidence and being there to share her path to employment. She thinks one of the key values of having a mentor is the opportunity to engage with someone who has diverse experience in life, and the fact they are ‘able to give you their perspective and that really gives you options instead of being [trapped] in your own mind, trying to formulate things. That never goes right!”, she said with a laugh.
There are also broader lessons to be learnt from the Success Works mentors. The fact that they are willing to give their time is a measure of how much they care. For Afreem this is ‘priceless’ and a true indication that there are people out there who do care about others.
Afreem describes her journey from candidate to her new role working at Success Works as ‘so important and something that I could not have learned anywhere else’. She describes it as a great honour to be part of an organisation that is the first in Australia to be specifically designed to help women with a criminal record gain employment. When Afreem started with the Success Works program she never expected that her first job would be with the organisation. She says:
“I have been able to accomplish so much and not allowing my past and my circumstances to shape who I am in the future, and I want to bring that to the women in all walks of life. You can redefine who you are….“
She is what is called a perfect Success Works story!
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