CCVic is pleased to announce our newest board members for 2024! Coming from a range of diverse backgrounds, ages and skills, our new board is community driven and committed to grassroots leadership. We look forward to working together towards offering capacity building training and community organising strategising sessions for the wider Victorian community.
Danica Meas
Secretary
Danica is an American-born Cambodian woman raised in Australia. As a young leader, Danica aspires to create inclusive and empowering spaces by fostering connections between community members. Since participating in the Ethnic Communities’ Council of Victoria’s (ECCV) Intercultural Young Advocacy Leader (IYAL) program from 2021-2023, she began the process of finding her voice and advocating for young multicultural people, particularly in the mental health space. As of March 2024, Danica has joined The Equality Institute’s ‘Find the Joy’ Intersectional Feminist Leadership Incubator program, and YMCA’s Youth Parliament program where she hopes to advance her knowledge of intersectional feminist practices whilst supporting young peoples’ ability to access and participate in civic activities. At CCVic, she strives to support community-building and knowledge sharing so that each participant can feel emboldened and empowered to take action and create the change that they wish to see in the world.
Dushyanthy Govender
Dushyanthy Govender is a former participant of ECCV's IYAL (Intercultural Young Advocacy Leadership) group and the current chairperson and founding member of the Mitchell Multicultural Community Association Incorporated (MMCAI). Over the past three years as a community organiser she has overseen the launch of an annual multicultural art exhibition and the 'Respecting me, Respecting us campaign' as well facilitating consultations between service providers and the wider CALD community. Through her work with the Tamil Refugee Council she also acted as the regional contact during the Refugee WAVE campaign in late 2023. Dushyanthy hopes to broaden her work in community organising as time goes on.
Brandon Fernando
With over 10,000 combined hours of experience as a Holistic Educator & Mentor, Brandon Fernando is a multi-faceted professional with a diverse background spanning social work, advocacy, education, and engineering. He is currently studying for a Master’s of Applied Teaching, and his Honours Thesis was awarded 1st Prize at the 2018 EnGenius awards, showcasing RMIT’s top Engineering students. He has volunteered for AIESEC – the world’s largest youth-run non-profit organisation,
supporting The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, and is currently a
committee member for Island of Men – a charitable organisation committed to deepening
connection to self, nature, and community.
Tash Rubinstein
Treasurer
Tash has professional experience across the arts, social justice, health and government
spaces. Tash completed a Master of Public Policy and Management from the University of
Melbourne in 2022 and most recently held a position as a Policy Officer in a Federal
Government agency. Before that, she worked in communications for Victorian not-for-profit
peak bodies in the multicultural and anti-violence space. Tash is a passionate advocate for human rights, equality, critical anti-racism, cultural pluralism as well as remaining an active member of her own community. As a values-driven person, she strives to make the world a more just and equal place for all.
Rocio Mendieta
Vice President
Rocio Mendieta is a passionate Journalist and Social Communicator who graduated
from La Sabana University in Colombia with a Master’s degree in Marketing and
Business from EDUDE Business School, Madrid, Spain. She has worked with CALD
Communities in radio projects, Aged Care, Disability and Educational sectors in
Australia. She has also worked in the Latin American, European and Australian
private sectors. Rocio has experience in the media sector of Colombia and Spain, especially
in television, and has won two prestigious awards in journalism for the ‘best story on
television’. She is passionate about working with communities, particularly youth and people with disabilities. As Community Coalition Victoria's vice president, she is
excited to use her bilingual skills and network to engage Latin Americans and other CALD communities, to equip them with community organising and advocacy skills.
Shay Leighton
Shay Leighton is an activist, unionist, and community organiser who has been involved in politics, community development, and movement building in one way or another for 25 years. He’s a regular face at protests and picket lines, or loudly debriefing about them at the pub afterwards. Shay is an industrial organiser for the Finance Sector Union with a focus on building resilient, knowledgeable activists in the dehumanising grind of call centres; a Community Organising educator, and the creator of Tough Guy Book Club, where Community Organising frameworks are used to address issues of men’s mental health, literacy, and loneliness.
April Robinson
April is passionate about public policy, having worked across many fields, she draws upon her skills in academia, research, project management and evaluation to work from a strengths-based, collaborative and consultative framework. She has a strong strategic policy development and analytic skills, whilst being adept at formulating recommendations for submissions into legislative and strategic reviews in areas such as mental health, primary health care, workforce, recovery frameworks and gender equity. April has developed, managed and implemented multiple co-designed projects, such as Resilient Women and Pasifika Talanoa, which explored areas of hate crime, family violence, youth and education and access to services for minority communities. For this, she has been recognised by the Victorian Police for her work in gender equality and work within multicultural and multi-faith communities.
Denisse Sandoval
President
Denisse is the founder of Community Coalition Victoria. She has over 20 years of experience in community organising, adult education and community campaigning and grassroots initiatives across several different countries including USA, Australia, China, Vietnam, India, Philippines, Bolivia and Chile. She studied at Cornell University in New York as an Equal Opportunity Program scholarship recipient. Denisse was highly impacted by the sub-prime mortgage crisis when she witnessed several working-class people in her home town of Brentwood, NY lose their homes in the early 2000’s, which also drew her to the Occupy Wall St. movement. She currently is working as a diversity and inclusion specialist, assisting a large non-profit with their equity and diversity strategy, whilst offering anti-racism training as a consultant. Denisse founded CCVic so that every-day people could learn how to organise their own neighbourhoods, leading to a stronger civil society.