Jemal Ahmet’s sources of pride
Jemal Ahmet has been CMY’s Executive Manager of Programs & Services since 2018. With nearly seven years under his belt, Jemal recently decided to retire from his Executive role and has handed over the reigns to former Senior Manager, Peta Fualau. We recently sat down with Jemal to learn more about his experiences at CMY and what gives him hope, for the future of young people.
Jemal was born in Cyprus and grew up in the UK from the age 8. His connection to youth work is strong and his first ever “proper job” when he was 18 years old was as a youth worker. Even whilst attending university, he would return to youth work during semester breaks. After graduating, he worked his way from youth worker into management roles, leading teams of youth workers to managing whole organisations.
Eventually, Jemal made his way to Australia in 1996 and earned himself a role at the Australian Red Cross’s Asylum Seekers Assistance Scheme (ASAS). At this point in time, ASAS’s main clients were East Timorese refugees who had fled genocide in their country. After leaving ASAS, Jemal became CEO of Whittlesea Community Connections where he worked for 18 years followed by two years as the CEO of Fitzroy Learning Network.
Before working with us, Jemal had a unique connection to CMY. His partner Emma had worked with CMY previously, so the organisation was already on Jemal’s radar when he was sent a chance job ad by a friend.
“I knew about CMY. I knew about the great work it did. I knew about some of the personalities at CMY like Carmel and Soo-Lin and understood they were doing great things,” says Jemal.
A past colleague of Jemal’s inspired him further to apply for the role.
“She thought that Carmel and I should work together, that we had a lot in common and that we would do good work together,” Jemal says.
Jemal of course scored the role of Executive Manager, Programs & Services and saw a lot of change throughout his time in the position. A particular challenge and a “source of pride” was making it through the 2020-2021 COVID-19 lockdowns. Jemal points to CMY’s management team’s tight-knit teamwork as a reason for the organisation’s success through this period of uncertainty for many
“There was a lot of anxiety, a lot of concern about our people,” Jemal says.
“We put our people first and worked as a tight unit to solve problems as they arose. We got through that two-year period and came out of it stronger.”
Whether it was back in the UK or at CMY, Jemal always worked closely with young people. Throughout his career he has observed a lot about young people, both the positives and the societal issues that have stifled them. In Jemal’s opinion, recently some things have “gone backwards” when it comes to multicultural young people’s disadvantage in education and the justice system. However, he has also observed great resilience in young people and that gives him hope.
“There are still some young people who have enormous resilience and enormous compassion and empathy and want to make a difference,” Jemal says.
“Whether it’s the young person who’s been through youth justice and wants to make sure somebody else doesn’t do that. Or, a young person who is prepared to turn up and participate in something that connects them to their own culture, to their own community, to give back. We have a lot of these young people at CMY and so the resilience is astounding to me, given the pressures they face.”
One of Jemal’s crowning achievements throughout his three-quarters of a decade at CMY was his involvement in establishing TARGET ZER0. It is a project which is focused on decriminalising the lives of multicultural young people and reducing their representation in the justice system – the idea being that their involvement in the system is reduced to absolute zero. Functioning as a coalition of services including Westjustice, Aspiring Young Africans Foundation, Anglicare Victoria, Orygen, YSAS and headspace and many others, Jemal believes it is collaboration that is the way to fully achieve total decriminalisation.
“When faced with issues that are entrenched, whether it’s youth justice or growing disengagement from education, or anything else that we seem to be making no headway with, we have to challenge ourselves to change the way we’re working. If business as usual is not achieving what we want, then we must change our approach,” says Jemal.
“We’re not just trying to fix one young person or 100 young people, or one community, or 10 communities, we’re trying to change the systems that hold the problem in place and that is going to take work, that is going to take a collective approach if we’re going to make headways”
Though Jemal is sad to move on from CMY, he is also excited to enter a new phase of his life: retirement. He has his own expectations for what the future holds for retirement.
“I’ve got two school-aged kids still, so there’ll be a lot of taxi driving for them and cooking and dropping them off and picking them up,” Jemal says.
“All phases of life are an adventure. And that’s how I will approach it and see what pans out, and I will probably be as silly in that phase of my life or as pathetic in that phase of my life or as grumpy in that phase of my life as I have been in all other phases.”