TRANSCRIPT
The Carla Zampatti Scholarship for Young Women, in collaboration with the Australian Multicultural Foundation, is a $10,000 national initiative dedicated to assisting young women from new and emerging culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds in achieving their dreams.
The scholarship was established in 2022 to honour the legacy of the late Carla Zampatti, the well-known Australian fashion designer and multiculturalism advocate.
As a young Italian migrant, Ms Zampatti struggled to break into the fashion industry at first, being denied bank loans as a single woman in the 1960s, before becoming hugely successive with upmarket designs.
Carla Zampatti’s son and chief executive of Carla Zampatti Limited, Alexander Schuman, says the aim of the scholarship is to encourage more diverse young women to defy the odds.
"I think the most exciting part is just to celebrate young women making a real difference in their lives as they come to this new country and find their own ways of empowerment, overcome their own adversity. Awards really are important because it helps us focus our minds on our shared mission to support and recognise and encourage women in business. And that's what this award is all about. It's about recognising, encouraging and empowering young women who have overcome adversity and really want to make a big difference in a new country."
This year, there have been two joint winners of the $10,000 prize, and two for the $2,500 distinguished award.
26-year-old MaryJane Amos, a Nigerian-Australian migrant is one of the joint winners.
Ms Amos started MuveBox - a service that provides a sustainable alternative to the traditional moving experience in 2021.
"Being like a young woman and also somebody you know, like is visibly not you know what the status quo Australian looks like, you know. Normally I give people trolley to like move their boxes with. I had a customer. I gave him two of the trolleys because he had requested 50 boxes for moving and so when I did come back to retrieve my boxes he had lost one of my trolleys. So basically, he refused to pay for the service that was rendered to him. And he also refused to return my trolley. So I think with that, I don't know I felt like I was a little bit disrespected because, you know, he knew that I didn't have any backing and it was just me know, this young African girl like what's she going to do? Pretty much."
The second joint winner, Bellamore Ndayikeze, is a passionate community advocate who spent most of her childhood in a Tanzanian refugee camp.
Ms Ndayikeze is looking to launch a social impact company, supporting emerging young leaders to reach their full potential.
The 27-year-old says she has experienced roadblocks as a result of her background - but feels her resilience and will to inspire more refugees and people from her community has kept her going.
"When I came to Australia, I was really young and the idea of business, the idea of being an entrepreneur, all of that never really existed and battling with like war trauma because I was actually born in the war and came to Australia, and navigating like the nuances of living in a new country, and language and culture and you know, way of being and being open to opportunities that are completely foreign was really, really a huge issue for me, particularly being in spaces that I felt like I didn't belong ."
22-year-old Ayah Darwich is one of the $2,500 distinguished award winners.
Ms Darwich, who has Australian-Lebanese background, was inspired to make a film that challenges the stereotypical war-torn depictions of Arab cinema.
"I want Arab people to be able to see their countries in a beautiful way. I feel like we've seen so much trauma, and especially now with what's happening in the world and in Palestine. I want us to see positive representation and something for us to be proud of. So that's the difference that I want to make."
The other distinguished award winner, Kimberly Wadyehwata is a Zimbabwean native.
She says she combines these two aspects of her identity to advocate for under-represented multicultural communities in Australia.
"For me it’s always been about representation. I reckon one of the disadvantages, it's not been something that you see readily and out loud, but it's like a micro disadvantage where there is no representation of people that look like me in the Australian media for instance. Like if you look at all the popular TV hosts, or the popular TV shows the people essentially, they don't look like me."
Executive Director of the Australian Multicultural Foundation, Dr Hass Dellal, says the group has been proud to support the scholarships.
Dr Dellal says the awards reflect the underutilised talents of young women from migrant and refugee backgrounds.
"The most important part was you know, they really demonstrated how much they really have to offer to Australian society, through the skills and through that their skills set and their creativity. But also show and articulate those hardships and barriers and challenges that have been packed their journey in achieving their proposed ventures and projects and activities. But I think what these young ladies also demonstrated a commitment and sustainability in terms of their projects."
