Parramatta refugee worker honoured
ANGLICARE Sydney worker Cheryl Webster has been awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for 26 years of service to African refugees in Sydney.
Currently working as co-ordinator of ANGLICARE’s Small and Emerging Communities Program in Parramatta, Cheryl oversees the provision of community development services and training to small, newly arrived refugee communities throughout the Sydney metropolitan area.
Funded by the Federal Department of Immigration and Citizenship, the program helps newly arrived families and communities to settle and participate in society.
"I am honoured to receive the award and grateful to the people who have supported me," says Cheryl. "I wouldn’t have been able to receive the award without the support within ANGLICARE, of workers in other services and the people in the refugee communities themselves."
Remembering her first day at work, Cheryl says her son was just 18 months old when she took on the part-time role at ANGLICARE Sydney in Ashfield in June 1985.
"When I first started I was working generally with migrants and refugees in a community development role. Since then I’ve continued to work with small and emerging refugee and migrant communities," says Cheryl.
"I admit I hadn’t had much experience with people outside my own culture when I first started, but the job soon provided opportunities to meet with and care for people from vastly different backgrounds. I had to quickly get my head around their issues, needs and assess what services they required.
"In 1997 we received funding for a Southern Sudanese project that assists humanitarian entrants from Southern Sudan. We had been working with people from different African countries before that. We’ve been working with the Ethiopian community, for instance, for about twenty years."
Cheryl says her passion for the people she helps comes from her faith in Jesus. She attends St Thomas’ North Sydney and says it’s difficult to separate what she has been doing from being faithful to God.
Pointing to 1 Peter 4:10-11 Cheryl says she is a firm believer that each of us should use whatever gift we’ve received to serve others as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.
"The bible makes it clear that if anyone speaks, they should do as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength that God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ," says Cheryl.
"I guess working with refugee communities has been my ministry in a way. This program is where God has placed me and God has given me the passion for the people I work with, and the ability to work with them."
