In the first week of Term 3 Holiday, we held a Capacity Building Workshop called “Working alongside Refugees and Their Families”. It was organised at Hagley College.

It is an annual training offered by Hagley College to individuals and organizations providing resettlement services to refugee people. Through the project, Hagley has been able to raise awareness of the needs of refugee communities and build the capacity amongst government and local community agencies through the workshop. Since September 2008, there have been twenty-two Capacity Building Workshops developed, funded and delivered. This year, a total of 61 attended the workshop and came from 28 organizations. They had access to a set of 28 different reading materials and resource guide books and listened to ten key speakers at the workshop to share their experiences of working with former refugees. Capacity Building workshop received positive feedback from the participants and they would like more training in the area. They found the programme valuable to their work.