On the 7th of March last year, the Refugee Action Collective Queensland hosted a Brisbane-wide Refugee Welfare and Advocacy Conference on Saturday, 7 March 2015.

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This conference brought together advocacy groups, service delivery agencies, and independent advocates from various refugee, activist and welfare networks in Brisbane. We wanted to start a discussion about the situation facing asylum seekers coming to Australia and the challenges of the movement to support them.

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The conference, held at the Queensland University of Technology at Gardens Point, was attended by keynote speaker, Kon Karapanagiotidis, CEO and Founder Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, Melbourne. Others speakers present were:

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• Father Pan Jordan

• Rebecca Lim, Romero Centre

• Dr. Nada Ibrahim, Senior Research officer Qld Centre for Domestic and Family Violence Research (CDFVR) Central Queensland University (CQU)

• Carly Jordin, Centre for Social Change

• Multicultural Development Association (MDA)

• QPASST

• Jeni Nichols and Anne Hilton

• Brian Procopis, Scattered People’s Choir

• Casey Crocket, Community Café: The Café Conversations Project

• Scotia Monkivitch: Walking Borders

• Alain Rondot, Chilout

• Ian Rintoul, Refugee Action Collective

• Fernanda Claudio, Post-doctoral Research Fellow, School of Social Science, The University of Queensland (UQ)

• Rima Filhan, Syrian writer and human rights activist

• Nera Komaric, World Wellness Group

• Beata Lunden, Harmony Place

• Robert Nicholas, Refugee Action Collective

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