00:00:07:01 - 00:00:35:19 Unknown My name is Piang Lilian. I'm the president of Chin Community Victoria, which is the Falam Chin community from Burma. We have about 700 members in Melbourne. And 99% are refugees from Burma, resettled here and we have a lot of young children. 00:00:36:21 - 00:01:01:08 Unknown Some of them are born here. We also have some children born overseas. And so we have parents, most of them have very little English language skills. Some younger people with some quite good English skills and some young especially who are born here, they're very good english. 00:01:01:19 - 00:01:29:06 Unknown So that different levels of integration, I guess. But the older ones did more help in the integration and Falam Chin is one of the Chin groups from Burma. There are Hakha Chin. There are Mizo. Zomi, Zo. There are Zotung, Zophei. 00:01:30:01 - 00:02:08:23 Unknown There are about 40 different Chin groups, of which about ten are represented here and in Victoria. We form a community organisation in 2007. So we're now about 14 years, almost 15 now. And at the beginning we didn't have any facility, anything, but now we have this Coopersmith pavilion to call home, and we also have a few 00:02:08:23 - 00:02:37:15 Unknown sporting clubs, soccer clubs, we have two. We also have volleyball clubs and we have after school program. We have language schools supported by the VSL Victorian School of Languages. We have a main community organisation. We have a youth group. 00:02:38:09 - 00:03:14:15 Unknown We have elderly group. We have women's group. So we do a lot of activities all year round. And to maintain culture and language, we celebrate Chin New Year, we celebrate Chin National Day. We also have CCV Day. We always invite local, state and federal MPs as well as councillors from local council, which is Maroondah Council, to build the 00:03:14:16 - 00:03:42:22 Unknown relationship. And we also invite I guess, service providers like MIC, ECLC a few other who helped us a lot. Advice for, I guess, peer communities from us experience. It's better to do things that you need by yourself with whatever resources you have. 00:03:44:01 - 00:04:30:13 Unknown Even with very limited resources, you can do small scale up things. For example, we started doing the food relief operation from whatever resources we have, and we provided, like international students with some small food hamper and council, Maroondah Council found out about it and saw that the community development officer gave us some lemon and other food 00:04:30:13 - 00:04:53:05 Unknown products to us. And later on, she called and said that "I'm going to apply for food relief grants from state government. Would you like to get some?" And we said "yes", so we got $17,000 to help food relief. So quite often, if we want to do something, we think about getting a grant. 00:04:53:05 - 00:05:34:13 Unknown But it's better to start with something that you can do. And then I want to show them that you can actually then grant all necessary. Advice for other communities with regard to engaging with Parliament Members. I would say whenever we have, like cultural events or community events, always invite Parliament Members and not to demand what we need 00:05:34:22 - 00:06:08:13 Unknown , you know, to tell them our problem. Just just to share our culture and our language and build up a relationship and be frank with them regarding, I guess, difficulties and problems and our need. And don't ask them what we want, tell them what we need and what our difficulties are. 00:06:10:18 - 00:06:31:22 Unknown Normally, the help comes from them, not not because we demand something, but because they see us and they know us and they see what we need. The other thing is need to work with other communities quite often Council or State Government 00:06:31:22 - 00:07:01:18 Unknown cannot afford to provide a grant to each and every community. To do that, it's going to cost a lot of money. For example, this Dorset Recreation Reserve Project, it came about because we all work together not just Chin, Karen. All Burmese groups in the area. 00:07:02:16 - 00:07:24:16 Unknown And yeah, so to maintain a good relationship with other communities and also to maintain friendship with them, members of Parliament, State and Federal, I think that's the most important thing.