The South Sudanese Community of Victoria met last night with members of the Greek Community of Melbourne, Victoria to discuss ways that the Greek Community can assist and work with the South Sudanese Community in developing lobbying capacity, language schools and projects that bring both communities together.

Fotis Kapetopoulos of Kape Communications and adviser to former Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu have been working to bring the two communities together since 2018. Bill Papasterdiagis the President of the Greek Community of Melbourne Victoria, has been a major supported of the idea and while he could not attend the meeting last night said, “I can think of nothing more worthy that a significant community as ours assisting our brothers and sisters in the South Sudanese Community as well as other new and emerging communities.”

Leonidas Vlahakis, Jorge Menidis, Theo and Costas Markos among others expressed a deep desire to assist the South Sudanese Community of Victoria in developing their own independent voice.

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Pastor Tu Yoa a leader in the South Sudanese Community said: “We understand that the Greek community has been through what we have in the past, we also know that over the period you have developed excellent infrastructure, schools, churches and are able to lobby government and we want to learn from you.”

The two communities are working together on a number of projects. Jorge Menidis from the Greek Community said, “We understand much of what you are going through, we went through it in then past, and one area of strength was building our language schools, our cultural events and our churches and we are keen to show you how we did that.”

Costa Markos from the Greek Community focused on “dance, language and faith” as the “key building blocks” for the two groups to learn from each other.

Another issue touched upon was racism. “We also want our people to know that the  racism you are suffering now was no different to the racism we encountered we want our community to be empathetic and supportive,” said Theo Markos.

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Deng Monybuony Kor social worker and representative added that he believed that his community “needs to be seen as South Sudanese not only as African” and in working with the Greek Community his community would “gain the level of independence they need to work as cohesive and strong community”

The meeting ended with embraces and some emotion as both communities look forward to a period of collaboration.