With a 25-year background in marketing and public engagement, Omar Ponsot says he secured a position in his field shortly after arriving in Australia in 2022.
As marketing manager with refugee service organisation,
, he says he was tasked with developing a four-year strategic plan for handling newcomers, particularly refugees.
And it was in this capacity that he attended a Hume Police District meeting in north Melbourne in mid-July this year.
The Hume district covers around 30 suburbs and areas including Broadmeadows, Craigieburn, Roxburgh and the Melbourne Airport.
“I attended a meeting organised by the district to discuss the police’s communication with multicultural communities in Hume,” Mr Ponsot says.
In that session, he says the region’s police chiefs presented their accomplishments in working with communities, but they also spoke about some of the difficulties the police face. In particular, recruiting young Arabic people to the force, he says.
Police reach out
“I did not expect that they would pay so much attention to what I put forward, but they actually listened to every word I said,” he says.
“They arranged for me to meet with them (Victoria police chiefs) in July 2023 and we discussed all the details of my proposals (for more than two hours).”
Some of his suggestions to encourage greater engagement include sports tournaments between police teams and community teams as well as informal police involvement and presence at spiritual and cultural festivals.
Humanitarian visa
Mr Ponsot, his wife and two children spent five years in refugee camps in Iraq after fleeing a war in their home country of Syria.
They were finally able to settle in Australia in 2022 with humanitarian visas.
While Mr Ponsot had left behind a successful career in fashion, design, and university teaching, he says he was able to use all of those experiences to get a job when he arrived in Australia.