A helper of others finds hope

Unexpected: Sidra came to the ASRC seeking help for herself and her family. But it was helping others that saved her.

Back home in Pakistan, Sidra was accustomed to helping others. So it was worse than a shock to find herself on the receiving end of that aid instead. It threw her into depression. She didn’t really begin to recover until she was once again able to give aid to others.

In Pakistan, Sidra was always busy. She worked as a project manager for the United Nations, working alongside other NGOs to deliver humanitarian projects to refugees fleeing violence across the border in Afghanistan and those living in marginalised conditions. She managed everything from project proposals, quality control and reporting to site visits.

She was great at her job, and says she felt she was born to do it. “When I was just five or six years old,” she says “I cried watching TV coverage of violence in nearby Kashmir. And I vowed that when I grow up I will do something to help these people”.

And help them she did. In different roles for various aid organisations, Sidra oversaw the opening of new schools, hospitals and healthcare facilities that would give people access to basic things we take for granted like clean drinking water. She helped to provide a means for her community to create an income, providing sewing machines to working mothers, as well as the skills to use them.

With already two Masters degrees under her belt in commerce and international relations, Sidra had never imagined she would one day find herself needing the same help. But when her family’s safety was threatened they found themselves in Australia seeking asylum. They were not alone in fleeing terror in that region of Pakistan, where thousands of people have been killed by extremist groups.

When she and her small family arrived in Australia, the formerly confident and engaged Sidra became lost. Anxious and isolated, she says now that she suffered depression.

Her husband struggled to find work at first, and it was tough to make ends meet without a salary. Increasingly stressed about the future, she found herself dependent on sleeping pills.

At home in Pakistan, she had always been an active part of the community, but here, although she desperately wanted to integrate, she felt increasingly isolated: “I do not know now why I felt like this,” she says. “But I felt like I was a stranger here (in Australia)”.

Compounding this, she found she had lost her courage to talk to others, to communicate.

“If you don’t talk to people, you can’t integrate,” she says.

She could not understand why she felt isolated, why she was avoiding people. “That’s not me – running from people,” she told herself. Speaking of that time now, Sidra’s voice is flat and subdued. There is none of the spark of her earlier conversation – when she’d spoken of helping others back home in Pakistan.

“I was in darkness,” she says.

At home in Pakistan, working with aid agencies, she had always been busy. “There was not a moment I was sitting idle. But when I came here, everything was – the opposite of that”.

Then she heard about the Asylum Seekers Resource Centre (ASRC) and how they supported people seeking asylum. Anxious about her family’s prospects as the money ran out, she came seeking help: “I didn’t know much. I didn’t know about all the ASRC’s programs. I was just thinking that if my husband didn’t find a job we would really struggle”.

“I was just looking for a place of hope,” she says.

At first, Sidra was seeking only material support. Her family accessed the ASRC’s foodbank, which offers weekly groceries to around 240 people each week. She was also able to access the employment program which lead her to a casual position as a retail assistant in one of the country’s biggest fashion brands.

But then after a few months she saw a poster at the ASRC that said Members who wanted to volunteer should apply. It was exactly what Sidra needed.

Given her extraordinary professional history in Pakistan, she was placed as an coordinatorn in the ASRC’s Women’s Program.

Sidra’s voice recaptures its former energy as she tells how busy she became helping other asylum seekers set goals, finding courses that they could study:  “It was exciting. I found that I could help them. They were totally lost. They were so desperate. They didn’t know what to do. I would guide them through the right pathway, setting goals with them and linking them with ASRC programs.”

The helper of others had found her way again. “From that moment, I started to feel myself again”.

Sidra came here seeking hope, and in doing so was able to give others hope.

“After I started volunteering, I came out of that state of being helpless. From that moment, I found myself empowered. I got back my strength. I got back my confidence.”

And what’s next?

“I want to work for the youth in Australia. I want to work for women who suffer domestic violence. I want to keep working for the asylum-seeking community.

“I want to help make them productive, help them grow. They shouldn’t be stuck in one place.

“I have so many things in my mind that I want to help them do.”

Australia has so much to gain from Sidra’s skills and experience. It’s telling that without the small bit of help that ASRC offered, Sidra was too consumed by anxiety about her family’s wellbeing to feel she was able to offer hew new home anything.

We reckon that’s how most people feel. They don’t want a hand out; they just sometimes need a hand up. And by giving them that hand up, we make it possible for them to realise their potential to become an active, contributing part of our society.

For Sidra, there is still a way to go before she will feel well again. But now that she knows she can contribute again, the path to recovery is clearer.

Stories like this of hope and of rebuilding a life in safety are only possible through the generous donations of our community. If you can spare a donation to give more people like Sidra hope of a brighter future, please make donation

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Photography: Kim Landy