If you enjoy dining out with a difference, then you’ll want to keep Welcome Merchant on your radar. Since launching in 2020, this social enterprise – empowering refugee, migrant and asylum-seeker entrepreneurs – has organised 49 refugee-powered events, which simultaneously spotlight challenges faced by minority groups and raise money to support them.
For one night only, Welcome Merchant will host a special fundraiser for Rohingya refugees (an ethnic group from Myanmar) with an eye-opening panel discussion, delicious buffet dinner, free henna tattoos and poetry reading.
It’s been six years since the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar, which killed 10,000 Rohingya men, women and children. Welcome Merchant hopes to spotlight the often overlooked challenges faced by the Muslim minority group and give a voice to the approximately 3000 Rohingya people living in Australia. The social enterprise will particularly focus on the struggles of Rohingya women and girls in refugee camps and will donate a portion of profits from the night to Maiya School, a girls-only learning centre in Kutupalong Refugee Camp in Bangladesh.
The evening will kick off with an educational panel discussion featuring Rohingya community leaders Asma Nayim Ullah and Sajeda Bahadurmia, 2022 NSW Volunteer of the Year Mohammad Rauf and PhD candidate and social worker Zoe Bell. After the panel, guests can enjoy a delicious buffet of traditional dishes including lamb curry, chicken kurma, kofta and masala rice. They can also learn about Rohingya culture through a poetry reading and free henna art.
The Rohingyan Night fundraiser will be hosted at Parramatta’s Arts and Cultural Exchange on Sunday, December 10 from 6.15-8.30pm. You can purchase tickets here for $35 here.
