Canberra Jung Society: 4th April 2025: Sonia Di Mezza: “Experiences of Migrants and their Children”
April 4, 2025 at 01:07PM
Friday 4th April 2025
“Building our Nation: How Migrants and their Children have Shaped Australiai”
With Sonia Di Mezza
at MacKillop House, 50 Archibald St, Lyneham, ACT (and by Zoom)
You can see Sonia delivering an address along these lines at the National Library of Australia.
Sonia Di Mezza is a human rights lawyer, solicitor, and the Interim CEO of the Migrant and Refugee Settlement Services (MARSS). Other leadership roles in the not-for-profit sector have included: CEO of Loddon Campaspe Multicultural Services (Bendigo, Central Victoria); CEO of the Domestic Violence Crisis Service (Canberra) and Deputy/Acting CEO of the ACT Disability, Aged and Carer Advocacy Service, providing advocacy support to people with disability, mental ill health and older people experiencing elder abuse (ADACAS – Canberra).
Sonia has worked as a refugee lawyer, representing asylum seekers in Australian detention centres (Villawood, Curtin, Port Hedland). She has set up a project in Pakistan to resettle Afghan widowed women and their children fleeing the Taliban regime, to the US; established a legal aid project in the camps of Khartoum, Sudan; worked as a Resettlement Officer in Lebanon for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and worked with 2017 Nobel Peace Prize winner Kailash Satyarthi in India with his NGO ‘Save the Childhood Movement’, raiding factories and rescuing enslaved child labourers from factories in India. Mental health and wellbeing certification currently held include Advanced Certificate – Lifeline Telephone Counsellor and Mental Health First Aid accreditation.
She is the co-author of a book called Lovesick, which has been made into a Netflix documentary film, about her Indian friend’s contraction of the HIV virus in an arranged marriage.
Sonia sits on the board of International NGO Safety Organisation, an NGO that provides advice and analysis on security situations in conflict/humanitarian zones around the world. She holds a Master of International Law (majoring in human rights law); a Master of Commerce (majoring in accounting); and a Master of Business Administration (majoring in Women in Leadership). Sonia speaks English (native), Italian, Neapolitan (Italian dialect), French, Spanish. Arabic and Dari (basic).
Cost for attendance (at MacKillop House):
Jung Society members free,
Guests $15 (Seniors/Concession $10),
Pay cash at the door, or by bank transfer or by credit card via TryBooking.
We meet from 7:30 pm for tea and coffee and snacks, music, discussion and library.
The Guest Speaker’s presentation is at 8pm for an hour or so,
then we resume for questions and discussion, finishing by 10pm..
Contact: https://ift.tt/9i8hFd3
View on YouTube