Nadira Yusuf says she has felt driven to help the community ever since arriving in Australia as a refugee.
Ms Yusuf said she had a successful career managing hotels in Beijing but fled in 2004, after speaking out against the Chinese government’s ill treatment of the Uyghur people.
Ms Yusuf’s tale is one of 23 stories which feature in a book titled Seeking Asylum: Our Stories, published by the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC) and Black Inc.
Proceeds from sales of the book will go towards ASRC projects.
Ms Yusuf said that after arriving in Australia, she worked as a kitchen hand while studying English for two years.
“I came here with zero English and zero money in my pocket,” she said.
She completed further studies and obtained a job at Wyndham council, working with people who have a disability, for 10 years.
After losing her employment when the NDIS was implemented, she started her own business, an NDIS provider named Yishil Care.
“I now have more than 10 people working for me, including some of the girls I worked with at Wyndham council,” she said.
Ms Yusuf said she also keeps busy through volunteering, organising cultural events and concerts, and in her role as a Justice of the Peace.
In 2014 she established the Uyghur Language School Victoria, to help preserve her mother tongue, which China has banned people from speaking.
She also founded the Make Me Home (MMH) Charity to help Uyghur school and university students living in Turkey, whose parents have been arrested by the Chinese government.
Ms Yusuf said she started the charity after travelling to Turkey and meeting a young girl in these circumstances, whom she sponsored to continue studying.
The charity now supports nearly 40 children and 10 university students in Turkey.
Ms Yusuf said she was keen for the federal government to officially recognise what was happening to the Uyghurs as genocide, which eight nations have already done.
“Australia needs to stand up for human rights and realise this is genocide, like what the Germans did to the Jews in the 1940s,” she said.
Seeking Asylum: Our Stories, $39.99, is available in bookstores and online.
Details: https://asrc.org.au/seeking-asylum-book
