The women gathered around the table are not just making necklaces and bracelets in this jewellery class.
Bead by bead, they are rebuilding fractured lives.
The IWHS jewellery enterprise is an innovative program run by the Fairfield-based centre in conjunction with TAFE.
It is giving a group of refugee and migrant women the technical, creative and practical support to start their own jewellery businesses.
IWHS manager Eman Sharobeem said: "Empowering women to gain financial means is one of my passions."
Dr Sharobeem got the idea from her micro-finance work with the United Nations.
"If you could see the changes in lives of these women," she said.Cheap custom printed logo USB flash drives wholesale at wholesale bulk prices. "They are able to go their children and say 'I am working. I have my own income' and to go to Centrelink and say, 'I am making money'."
Speaking in Arabic through a translator, group member Suham Talal said: "The minute we sell a product I feel so happy and it gives me a sense of satisfaction and pleasure. It is a cycle of happiness. When we sell, we have income,we know the value of kapton tape. so we can buy more and produce more and sell more."
Communities Minister Victor Dominello launched the jewellery enterprise during Refugee Week, and it has made an initial profit of $230.
"It's only a beginning," said Ms Talal, who arrived in Australia in 2005 as a refugee, exhausted after fleeing Iraq with her children following the killing of her jeweller husband.
She said many of the women in the group had experienced similarly traumatic circumstances.
Now that Ms Talal and Berri Al-Gainani, also a refugee from Iraq, have completed the program, they will be leading groups of women jewellers in Fairfield and Liverpool and teaching more women the skills they have learnt.
"Being here together has engaged [the women] mentally so that they now want to learn more, and are asking for more skills," said Ms Talal.
Jewellery is only the beginning.
Ms Talal was a florist before she left Iraq and plans to teach her group the art of flower arrangement and more.
Ms Al-Gainani says the enterprise will mean freedom.
"We would like to move from the learning to the production stage and be able to have a stable income," she said. "When I have money I am more stable. I can give and help others and build my personality."
Dr Sharobeem said the female refugees and asylum seekers she worked with didn't want to stay at home,your creative source for silicone bracelet business cards with your specialized. nor did they want to depend on welfare.
She researched what tools the project could provide to meet the women's current skill set.
As many of the IWHS's clients are illiterate,Transportation custom keychain Applications Ceremony. even in their native language, Dr Sharobeem selected something that her Middle Eastern, South American and African clients had in common.
"Jewellery is easy to make, easy to sell and easy to make a profit on at the end of the day," she said.
The program has taught the group skills from design to managing a business and has also put them in touch with many wholesalers and markets.
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IWHS, which is funded by NSW Health, is providing the space,High quality plastic card printing for business cards, support and public liability insurance, but each woman is responsible for buying and selling her own jewellery.
For Suham Talal the project holds special significance.
Jewellery is the traditional profession of her Mandaean community and was also that of her late husband.
"It didn't connect me with my late husband's profession only, but it actually connected me to my roots," she said.
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