Rabecca Mphande
President and Co-founding Director
Rabecca is the President and Co-founding Director of AfriAus iLEAC: Inspire Lead Educate Advocate for Change (AfriAus iLEAC – https://afriausileac.org) as well as the Chairperson for Pan African Australasian Diaspora Network (PAADN) Women, Men & Gender Equity. By profession, she is an educator – 34 years long inspiring teaching experience as a secondary school teacher. She has been teaching English, English as an Additional Language, Literacy and Humanities at Hampton Park Secondary College in Victoria, Australia since 2004.
She has built the capacity of and continues to be passionate about creating opportunities for empowerment, ‘copowerment’ and promoting diaspora African and other culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) women, the ‘Girl Child’, youth at, people who are physically challenged and families to reduce inequalities, unfairness, injustices, discrimination, gendered bias and violence. Rabecca advocates for enhanced and recognised role of a woman, the ‘Girl Child’ and youth in sustainable development in host countries (e.g. Australia, Switzerland, etc) and countries of origin (e.g. Malawi, South Sudan, Sudan, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, etc) to contribute towards closing the gender gap.
She promotes unity in diversity to achieve common goals. Rabecca fosters Love as a tool to attain everlasting peace within oneself, the family, community, nation and globally.
She provides holistic approaches that timely intervene in and prevent chronic settlement and integration issues of diaspora African and other CALD women, youth and families.
Rabecca does not only initiate and strengthen partnerships but she also initiates and leads the co-designing and co-delivering of relevant and timely programs/projects.
Rabecca has excellent communication oral and written skills in English and Malawian languages such as Chichewa (Nyanja), Chitonga and Chitumbuka.
She also has excellent public speaking skills i.e. she has been one of the speakers/presenters at women, youth, family, the Girl Child and community conferences, annual festivals, forums, colloquium, summits and such like, since 2013.
Rabecca’s recognition includes:
- Sponsored in 2019 November by the African Union-CIDO, as one of the 6 PAADN delegates to the Africa-China Conference when PAADN delegates shared their achievements in Australia
- At State level – She was appointed as 2019-2021 Victoria Multicultural Commission Regional Advisory Council Member; 2018 to-date Victoria African Communities Action Plan Implementation Committee Member
- AWARDS:
- 2015 Ministerial Award – Winner of Women in Leadership
- 2019 Outstanding dedication & commitment for the African Australian Communities in Victoria
- 2018 African Communities Champion Award
- 2018 Lifetime Recognition Service to African Australian Communities Award
- 2015 Ambassador for Peace Award
Rabecca also has commendable grant-writing capacity that benefit African and other CALD communities in Victoria.
Also, see: https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/the-african-australian-success-stories-you-ve-probably-never-heard-20180421-p4zay1.html