The Welcome Dinner Project is a national movement
to connect people who are new to Australia
with people who are established here.
And so what it is in a nutshell is people coming together
over a shared potluck meal.
And the idea is to get to know one another
and to come together over the mutual love of food.
It's very special that we're all here tonight
as the first Welcome Dinner Project in Casey.
And really like to welcome you
because the weather is so bad today
and you all decided to come out here today
and eat dinner with a whole bunch of strangers.
I came from a culture that celebrate food
not only because it's basic necessity
but something that we look at as we should appreciate
and value it.
I actually cook today something
that's not related to my culture.
I baked the rainbow polka dots cake
which has a special meaning for me
and I wanted my cake to be symbolic for this event.
For me it represents this harmony
and diversity in our society.
And also when you look at the rainbow
it extends towards the sky
and it means for me in my eyes
that people can extend their opportunities
especially for the new ones who arrive to Australia
they can look for new opportunities,
hopes and dreams to become true.
So if you'd like to introduce your food as we go around
if you could stand up
and I'll ask you to do that as we go.
My story would be that this would be a regular dessert
after a roast meal on a Sunday.
So it makes you feel very full up and tired
and you sleep for the afternoon.
I brought a spaghetti dish today
that my mother's cooked for all her life.
Her original religion, she used to make it every Sunday.
Get up at seven o'clock and start from there.
It takes about three and a half hours to cook.
I've migrated from Italy when I was nine months old.
I come out with my mum and my elder brother
when I was nine months old
and I've lived in Casey for over 25 years.
What I cooked was a spaghetti pasta.
My mum's cooked that for over 65 years for every week
and that's what we had at home nearly every Sunday.
I'm from Bangladesh.
My name is Anika.
I just came here on the 4th of February this year.
So like I'm new to this country and to this culture.
Tonight I cooked rice pudding.
Basically this is a traditional food in our country
from where I came from.
It's like we have this in our festivals.
Like we offer them this food whenever we hear something good news.
It's basically a sweet dish in our country.
This is our speech bubble activity
and what we're going to do is write one word
that we're feeling right now at the end of the dinner.
You can write it in your own language.
You can draw a picture.
And it's just something that expresses how you feel
after a nice dinner like this.
I think there's a lot of barriers for people
to meet one another and feel that community connection.
I think obviously distance is an issue.
I'm really excited because this is an event
that is a real community event.
They are maybe don't have any place
that they know that they can go to to meet one another.
They're scared of saying the wrong thing.
You know, there's a lot of barriers for people to actually meet.
Community centres and neighbourhood houses
actually made for the local community to come
and enjoy doing something together.
So it could be by renting a room to celebrate.
It could be to come to a class to learn something new.
So the idea of hosting this as a first time
in a community centre,
this is to give the people some security.
This is the environment. This is what we're looking for.
So they might start hosting those dinners over in their private houses.
The Welcome Dinner Project is one of the only projects
that we know of in Australia
that actually do facilitated community dinners in people's homes.
It's quite unique.
Some people are a little bit wary of the concept,
but it's actually something that is very meaningful
to be invited to somebody's home for dinner.
My hope is that we have a Welcome Dinner Project every day,
that people who arrive in this country find out about the project
and are invited into the home of a local person
within a few months of them arriving here
and able to make connections in community quicker and more easier
and are really able to feel like they belong in a shorter space of time.
I want to meet new people, new culture,
because like here, I see lots of culturally diversified people
coming around from the world.
I love to learn new cultures, getting to know people.
I love to make new friends from other cultures.
Away from home, I really feel homely here.
I feel very contented.
