Success Story - Evelyn Helps Celebrate 100 000 Refugees in a Decade

Despite 12 long years in a refugee camp, and continuing uncertainty in her homeland of Liberia, Evelyn Ivy and her family have showed great courage and perseverance to begin a new life in Australia.

Evelyn and her family were welcomed to Australia at an event held in Melbourne in February 2006 which celebrated the arrival of 100 000 refugees in a decade under the offshore component of the Humanitarian Programme.

During seemingly endless years in Laine Camp, a refugee camp in the N'Zérékoré region of Guinea, Evelyn supported her five children, niece and two grandchildren by working as a seamstress and tailor for the Jesuit Refugee Services.

Although Evelyn had not heard of Australia until departmental officers interviewed her in Guinea, the Ivy family were granted a refugee visa as part of Australia's Humanitarian Programme.

Today, Evelyn and her family have settled in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne and are building a new life for themselves away from the chaos and uncertainty of their homeland.

All four of Evelyn's daughters are now studying at school or taking English classes. Evelyn's son Allen has plans to pursue tertiary education, building on a one-year course in business management that he completed in Ivory Coast.

In Australia the family has found peace and security. They are grateful to the Australian Government for the chance to pursue their life goals.

Evelyn's daughter Lovetta said Australia was a place to rest her mind. ‘I can settle down here, like I never could in Africa and know that I'm free now, there is no fighting, no rebels coming for me,’ Lovetta said.

Allen thanked the government for the chance at ‘total freedom’.

‘I appreciate the government for all the effort, all the mechanisms put in place to bring me here,’ Allen said.

‘Here I experience total freedom… I thank the government for that. I hope some day to repay what the government gave me.’

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