An Iraqi refugee family from Western Sydney has been inundated with donations to help cope with the pressures of remote learning during the pandemic after opening up about the difficulties of trying to do homeschooling without a computer.
The Luka family’s three sons, aged 12, 14, and 18, had previously been forced to do their school work using pen and paper after arriving in Australia from Lebanon in November last year.
But after featuring in an SBS News article last month, people from across the country offered to donate money, computers and tablets so the children, one of which is completing his final year of school, could continue their studies.
Among the donors was a 94-year-old veteran who anonymously donated $1,000 to the family so they could buy a computer.
“When we received the gift, our moral feelings became very high and we felt we are in our second country, in a country where we can practice our rights and have support, freedom and humanity values,” the boy's mother, Rana Luka, said.
“The children's happiness was so big, they started with enthusiasm and care doing their daily tasks and homework, they as well felt that they are in a safe country and they have a guaranteed future.”
Previously when her sons could not understand an English word, they would be forced to use an old mobile phone to look it up.
So many people offered to help that a number of devices will also be donated to other newly-arrived families in need of support.
Yamamah Agha, general manager of settlement service delivery at Settlement Services International (SSI), a community organisation that works with the Luka family and other new arrivals, said access to technology was often taken for granted.
“Refugees come with a lot of skills and experiences, and also face some challenges at the same time,” she said. “The Luka family … it was very difficult for them to homeschool with a lack of access to important devices."
“Many other families are in the same situation. They don’t have access to devices to be able to support their children to do their schooling from home when all of their educational materials are housed in platforms they don’t have access to.”
Sydney resident and IT worker Geoff Johnson was one of the people who reached out after he saw the article and offered to donate five refurbished laptops to the family. The 52-year-old father-of-two told SBS News he was spurred to act after watching his eldest daughter complete her Higher School Certificate (HSC) last year.
“I was just thinking how difficult that would have been for anyone, with kids doing their HSC this year and even having younger kids and having to try to work from home and do this online schooling thing and I know of plenty of well-off families in the [Sutherland] Shire saying how difficult that is,” he said.
“To be trying to do schooling on old mobile phones, to be honest, it would be almost impossible.”
Mr Johnson said he always has a steady supply of older computers through his work and thought it would be a good way to help out families in need and give the technology a second life.
“With all the horrible things that are happening at the moment, it’s a nice feeling to think that you can help someone by doing something very little, which is not a big deal to me or people like us that have been lucky in life,” he said.
“I really think it's time that we should be banding together ... when all you do is turn on the news and there's doom and gloom.”
Thanks to other donations, the Luka family now have the technology they need to learn from home. As a result, Mr Johnson’s laptops will go towards other refugee and asylum seeker families who are in need of devices.
While the New South Wales Department of Education previously told SBS News they were in the process of delivering laptops to students who need them, the roll-out was time-consuming and depended on schools requesting additional resources.
Ms Agha said SSI was working closely with schools, many of which provided some degree of support to refugee and asylum seeker students. But, she said, the level of support varied between schools and is often hampered by the number of people in the family who need digital access.
Beyond the practical benefits of the donations, Ms Agha said the wave of responses also went a long way to ensuring the family felt welcomed by their new country in a time when traditional ways of socialising are not possible.
“We feel that there are people here who care and think about us and our children and their future,” Ms Luka said. “From the bottom of our hearts, we are very happy with our new life in Australia.”
by Maani Truu
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