Research Methodology on Empowering Sudanese Refugee Women in Australia

This research report focuses on identifying methods to empower Sudanese refugee women in Australia, specifically addressing their awareness of current affairs, emotional intelligence, gender equality, and the Australian political system. The primary qualitative data is gathered through participant observation, field notes, video clips, photographs, and audio recordings from two women's support groups in Dandenong and Sunshine. Semi-structured questionnaires with open-ended questions are used to assess the effectiveness of existing programs, focusing on the women's experiences, healthcare access, education, employment, and expectations. The research also incorporates secondary qualitative data from scholarly journals, articles, and government reports to understand the condition of Sudanese refugee women in Melbourne and the various programs designed for their development. A Monitoring and Evaluation Framework is applied to address issues like limited education, healthcare, and awareness, with recommendations for improved funding, infrastructural support, and access to learning classes to enhance the women's overall capacity and integration into Australian society. The report emphasizes the importance of incident and monthly reports to track progress and mitigate underlying issues, ensuring accountability for gender equality and violence prevention.

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Research Methodology on Sudanese Refugee Women

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Research Methodology
The aim of the research is to identify ways in which Sudanese refugee women can be empowered
and make them aware of current affairs, emotional intelligence, gender equality issues, and the
Australian political system and infrastructure.
The research will be conducted primarily on Sudanese refugee women group. The qualitative
primary data will be collected from the participants of the two women's support groups
comprising of Sudanese refugee migrants, where one is based in Dandenong and other in
Sunshine. Participant observation field notes, video clips, photographs and audio recording will
be done to collect information from the refugee women. As suggested by Wildemuth (2016), in
order to identify and validate the research, conducting an interview process will be feasible for
this research. A semi-structured questionnaire will be prepared with open ended questions to gain
the perception of the effectiveness of the programs for the two women support groups. Currently,
there are many interventions conducted in Australia to support the Sudanese refugee women
(Initiatives of Change Australia, 2018). Therefore, the questions will be focusing upon
understanding the experiences of the refugee women, primary healthcare services received,
education facilities, employment opportunities and their expectations from the existing
interventions. The women will be asked to fill the questionnaire and a trained research assistant
will conduct an accuracy of the answers after each session. All the study participants will be
between 20 to 60 years from both the women support groups in Dandenong and Sunshine. Both
the groups are expected to comprise of same number of women. The interviews will be for 15 to
20 minutes with the refugee women and the supervisors of the refugee camps. A separate
interview will be conducted on the supervisors and practitioners to understand their role in
improving the lives of these refugee women and the changes they wish to bring. For the study
findings, different professionals working with Sudanese women's groups around Melbourne will
also be present.
As opined by Silverman (2016), the secondary qualitative research will be collected from
scholarly journals, articles and books by different practices in the field. To collect information on
secondary data, it will be collected from literature on the condition of Sudanese refugee women
groups in Melbourne and the various programs for their professional development and personal
empowerment. The data will be collected from Google scholar, Google search engines,

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government reports, health records and news articles on the present situation. The information
will be collected based on the main theme and rationale for conducting the research.
A Monitoring and Evaluation Framework will be applied to understand the impact of the issues
faced by the Sudanese refugee women. The Sunshine group is new when compared to the
Dandenong group and it consists of lesser women who are not well versed with the good
communication skills. The main areas of pitfalls are the lack of education and healthcare
facilities, lesser opportunities for empowering Sudanese refugee women, and lack of awareness
of the Australian political system and infrastructure. However, it is important to rectify the issues
by developing and monitoring and evaluation framework that will help in addressing the issues
like receiving assistance for the women and offering developmental approaches in terms of
education and livelihood opportunities in the early stages of migration. Also, due to limited
funding and infrastructural space, the activities are not able to gear up and therefore requires the
need of human resource capacity in the Sunshine group. The betterment of these women will
require funding and a medium to long term planning. As the women are unaware of the
Australian Political system, they can be provided with access to learning classes to understand
about different subject matters and improve their overall capacity. In order to monitor the
effectiveness of the above mentioned steps, it is required to create Incident reports and monthly
reports to check the progress and whether a response planning would be required to mitigate the
underlying issues. Along with that, the accountability for guiding principles to prevent gender
equality issues and violence issues will also be enhanced. The success of the monitoring and
evaluation framework will depend upon its effectiveness and significant progress in the lives of
the Sudanese refugee women.

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Reference List
Initiatives of Change Australia, 2018. South Sudan Women Create Community-Led Solutions.
[online] Available at: <https://au.iofc.org/south-sudan-women-create-community-led-solutions>
[Accessed 25 May 2019]
Silverman, D. ed., 2016. Qualitative research. 4th ed. California, USA: Sage.
Wildemuth, B.M. ed., 2016. Applications of social research methods to questions in information
and library science. 2nd ed. California, USA: ABC-CLIO.