Hi I'm Gufran!
My grandfather was a teacher in a small town in India. He noticed the kids around him had nowhere to get a decent education, so he built a school.
My dad was a lawyer for people who couldn't afford a lawyer. My mum taught sewing, embroidery, henna, and 20 other skills to women with no income of their own, then found them the work afterwards.
There were five of us in a one bedroom rental, and I had no idea we were doing it tough, because the house was always full of people and food.
I came to Melbourne in 2017 with about five hundred dollars, and a generous brother who paid for my visa, and gave me a place to stay. I got a job in thirty days, married a primary school teacher, and had three kids.
Then I became a business manager at a school. To get funding for a kid with a disability, the school has to spend its own money identifying that kid first. If it can't go over budget, the kid never gets identified, the funding never comes, and the support never arrives. And it looks like nobody did anything wrong, because nobody did anything at all.
I argued we had to spend it anyway. I lost that job in March. I'd spent years inside big firms before that, so I knew the drill. You toe the line or you leave. It's not just schools. It's everywhere, and every day people are the ones who lose out the most.
Three generations of my family have built the thing that was missing instead of complaining about it. I don't think I've got a choice in the matter. That’s why I’m running with the Greens to represent people, not corporations, and achieve better futures for us all.