The trip of a lifetime has left two aspiring African-Australian leaders eager to help young people discover new horizons.
Mohamed Semra, 19, of Maidstone, and Winta Eyob, 21, of Sunshine North, recently helped crew the tall ship Young Endeavour along the Queensland coast.
They were joined by Gellibrand MP Tim Watts, who praised their tenacity during the inaugural African Australian Leadership Challenge.
Mr Semra said he was hesitant about applying for the challenge at first, but thought about what the experience might mean for the next generation of young African-Australians.
“When I was at school, I saw younger kids were hesitant to take on leadership roles because there weren’t really people of African heritage in those positions,” he said.
“At the beginning [of the sailing trip] I was terrified of climbing or heights, but it was a very supportive community within the boat.”
Ms Eyob said everyone on board worked together.
“You challenge yourself even more than you expect to,” she said.
Ms Eyob arrived in Australia at the end of 2016 after living as a refugee in Kenya for almost a decade.
Mr Semra came to Australia with his mother and siblings when he was two years old after his father went missing in South Sudan.
He now wants to show the wider community that the perception of Africans in the media or political debate is not the only story.
“I think there’s a small per cent that are getting a larger media attention than a lot of us who are doing good, so I think having this platform to show the world that we’re not really one-dimensional is really nice,” he said.
“The most important thing that I’ve gained from this trip is that it’s reinforced my ambition to help my community.”
Mohamed Semra has experienced first-hand what happens when society starts making assumptions about people according to their skin colour.
He was one of the African-Australian Maribyrnong College students asked to leave an Apple store at Highpoint shopping centre because staff were concerned they were going to shoplift.
Ms Eyob said she was grateful that Mr Watts had reached out to the African-Australian community in his electorate.
“Being a politician, you don’t see what’s really going on on the ground and the real stories, but Tim tried to reach Africans and get to know us which really is amazing for our community,” she said.
“It really helps us to voice our stories and to speak out our stories, rather than someone speaking on our behalf.”
Mr Watts said he has invited Ms Eyob and Mr Semra to Parliament House in Canberra to speak about their journey and the challenges facing their community in Australia.
Mr Watts said he has invited Ms Eyob and Mr Semra to Parliament House in Canberra so they can make their voices heard in the nation’s capital.
“Winta and Mo completed a physically and emotionally challenging voyage to test themselves and develop their leadership capabilities,” he said.
“It was inspiring for me to see what they, and the rest of the youth crew, could achieve.”
