In 2000, Anna Dimo had just fled her war-torn home as a single mother with eight children.
Settling into a new life in Australia proved to be a whole new challenge.
Now Ms Dimo is a leader of the South Sudanese Community in Sydney, and mentors other migrants from her country.
"I have been a principal of a school back home and here I was learning ABCs in Australia. It was very hard for me to learn the streets and how to use Centrelink and find housing."
Her experience is one shared by thousands and which inspired the Good Neighbour Project.
It's program aimed at getting older communities to support the settlement of newly arrived refugees and migrants into Australian community life.
And it links former refugees with new arrivals from all over the world.
Nicole Yade founded the project and is working in partnership with the Ethnic Communities Council of Australia.
She says the $60,000 will go a long way to support the program.
"This grant will help us pay for interpreters when they're needed and that will really assist with the volunteers."
There are already 60 trained volunteers with 30 more due to be trained.
Each is well aware of the difficulty of a new start, especially those like Doctor Ramzi Barnouti, who arrived in Australia as an Iraqi refugee in 2005.
He says he had to navigate a new language as well as a new culture.
"They need to work somehow or to have somebody there to take care of them. Everybody that comes here, the hardest thing was the first 100 days, then the first six months. And then when it goes one year, they are beginning to settle. But for each family to settle they need five years."
And that is where he and other good neighbours come in.
Giving their time to help refugees find a home, school and job in their first months in the country.
The good neighbour project is currently only operating across Sydney, but those behind it have ambitious plans.
But Mary Karras, Chief Executive of the Ethical Communities Council of New South Wales, has ambitious plans..
"The Good Neighbour project is an opportunity that we're hoping will go nationwide, because it provides the opportunity for our communities to be able to contribute in particular some of our elders in the community who really want to give back to the communities and who want to be able to volunteer with all the refugees and with a number of migrants that are settling and asylum seekers that are settling in New South Wales and across Australia."
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