Supported by the Victorian Government through the Victoria Remembers Program 2024–25
Episodes: bilingual audio interviews recorded with diverse Australian military veterans.
Veterans: engaged in person or through production processes during the initiative.
Thousands of social media reach achieved across campaign channels.
Culturally and linguistically diverse families in northern Melbourne faced structural barriers in accessing mainstream veteran commemoration due to linguistic gaps and unfamiliarity with Australian military history. For many Arabic-speaking residents, prior experiences with military institutions in countries of origin created systemic disconnects regarding local remembrance practices.
Tawasul designed a four-episode bilingual podcast series featuring Australian veterans from diverse cultural backgrounds. We implemented a dedicated dual-language digital platform to host these educational resources in English and Arabic. Tawasul facilitated direct community engagement by coordinating participation at the Craigieburn Dawn Service alongside local veterans.
The Journey
Tawasul Foundation produced a four-episode bilingual podcast series featuring Australian veterans from diverse backgrounds someone from Queensland, a Palestinian-Australian Air Force officer, a Navy captain who was the first Muslim woman to wear hijab in naval uniform, and someone who spent 50 years quietly building remembrance into the heart of Craigieburn.
Each conversation was professionally recorded, edited, and published across all major podcast platforms. A dedicated bilingual, and accessible, digital platform honouringveterans.org.au was built to house the episodes, veteran profiles, and educational context in both English and Arabic. A sustained social media campaign ran across Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube, designed to reach communities who engage digitally rather than through traditional commemoration channels.
Arabic-speaking Victorians were not an afterthought in this design. They were the audience the entire architecture was built for.
Tawasul Foundation attended Anzac Day commemorations in Craigieburn alongside Kevin O'Callaghan one of the veteran participants and the community he'd spent decades building. For many of our CALD community members present, it was their first dawn service. The conversations that started that morning didn't end when the ceremony did. Veterans and community members found shared ground not through a program or a facilitated workshop, but simply by standing in the same place at the same time, for the same reason.
That on-ground presence led directly to a new connection: local youth who had engaged with the podcast and campaign expressed interest in volunteering with the Craigieburn War Memorial organisation. That link is now being formalised a direct line between a conversation recorded in a studio and a young person turning up at a memorial.
The project also opened early dialogue between Australian veterans in the Craigieburn area and non-Australian veterans people who served in other countries' defence forces and now live in the same suburb. Kevin had spoken during his episode about his SES unit already including members from Iraq, Lebanon, India, and Vietnam. Those cross-community conversations between veterans are still forming, but they've started. This project helped create the conditions for them.
Beyond Craigieburn, a veteran participant was connected with Tawasul Foundation's multicultural arts exhibition in Hume. Their artwork sat alongside work from community members across many backgrounds — a small moment that reflected exactly what the project was built around: veterans not as symbols, but as neighbours.
In total, four veterans were recorded across four episodes. More than a dozen others were met and engaged with in person throughout the project.
Youth Participant, Craigieburn Engagement Program, Tawasul Foundation
The veterans project demonstrated how to adapt to different environments, which is highly relevant to youth from multicultural backgrounds. Hearing how the first hijabi naval officer adapted to her circumstances taught me to react positively to challenging situations and focus on delivering outcomes.
