Khin Khin Sumon and her family resettled in Australia in 2012, following years of living in a refugee camp in Thailand. Khin Khin is a member of the Karen community in Geelong.
What do you love most about living in Geelong?
The sense of
community. Also, there are opportunities
to be involved in arts and cultural activities.
What does healing mean
to you?
Finding myself,
and also finding strength through community. Often people think that they can
only rely on themselves and go through whatever they’re going through on their
own. But there is help and support available if you reach out and look for it.
How can art and
storytelling help with healing?
There are some
things that we cannot put into words and some of my experiences are sometimes
difficult to share. I’m a visual person so I love communicating through art. Also,
storytelling is a powerful tool that can educate people. You can learn so much
even from talking to a stranger.
What are you most
looking forward to in the future?
Self-development.
I used to only think about others. I feel like I need to make sure that I also
look after myself while helping others.
How can we better
support people from refugee backgrounds?
From a
practical sense, we’re still dealing with errors that were unintentionally made
when we first arrived because we didn’t speak English and couldn’t understand
all the paperwork.
I hope that more support for newly-arrived refugees are
provided.
For the wider community, I think more could be done to enable them to
understand our experiences and to hear about our stories – it can be through
art and cultural activities.