Honours for Refugee Workers
21 December 2000 at 12:12 pm
AUSTCARE – Australians Caring for Refugees has delivered its 2000 Awards to Australians who have made extraordinary sacrifices for the benefit of refugees around the world.
The 2000 Paul Cullen Awards were made to Hoi Trinh, Erica Lloga and the St. Bernadette Refugee Resettlement Committee from Sydney’s Castle Hill region.
Hoi Trinh is a young barrister and solicitor from Melbourne who has spent a considerable amount of time working as a voluntary advisor for stateless Vietnamese people in Hong Kong and the Philippines.
Erik Lloga took a leading role in Operation Safe Haven, both in caring for the 4000 Kosovar Albanian evacuees, and advocating their cause with the minister during the difficult return phase. All of this work was done voluntarily and at considerable personal cost.
St. Bernadette Refugee Settlement Committee is a service by a small Catholic Church at Castle Hill in Sydney’s northwestern suburbs. In 1979 two church members responded to a call from the Sydney Archbishop to assist the wave of Indochinese refugees trying to make a new home in Australia. Twenty years later the Committee has helped resettle close to 100 families, mostly Vietnamese.
