Bridging the world through learning

For Dilhara Mendis, helping others learn comes naturally.

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As a teenager growing up in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Dilhara volunteered to help students master the English language to gain better opportunities and her passion for helping others took her around the world, before she moved to Australia 20 years ago and found herself at UOW College.  

From Colombo to Australia

Dilhara maintains her commitment to helping others as an academic teacher and course coordinator at UOW College, where she has previously worked as an English language teacher and lecturer.  

Through the LOVED Charity, she also supports the educational needs of underprivileged children and offers other services to communities in Sri Lanka who need support.

“I realised as I grew older that charity is filling a void or doing something positive whenever a need arises. It does not have to be monetary or material in nature,” she says.

Dilhara grew up in Sri Lanka in a Buddhist family, went to a Catholic school and was friends with a diverse range of people from myriad backgrounds and religions.  

“Education in Sri Lanka is free, bringing together students of diverse backgrounds. However, since everything was in English, those not fluent were often cut off from opportunities. It was a harsh reality wrapped in a common joke.”

Empowering through language

Witnessing the disadvantage of students who weren’t as proficient as herself in English, Dilhara began volunteering to tutor her classmates.

“Teaching English has been part of my life and I saw how important language is to accessing education,” she says.

“To me, it was something so natural. I taught everyone who wanted to learn. Giving is part of the Buddhist culture and growing up as a child I was lucky to have seen how important giving was.”

After graduating from university with a science degree, Dilhara moved to another suburb of Colombo and once again found herself teaching the less-affluent village children.

“One of my best friends from school started a charity called LOVED, which is based in Dubai, and we did, and still do a lot of work for disadvantaged women,” she says.

Inspiring change at UOW College

When she moved to Australia in 2004, Dilhara continued her passion for helping others in their English language journey. She volunteered at TAFE and tutored Iraqi refugees and women at the Illawarra Multicultural Services.

“In Australia, it was a different need – older immigrants and refugees who had fled war and persecution leaving behind their flourishing businesses, homes and wealth. I trained and became a volunteer adult literacy tutor and fulfilled their language needs with compassion so they could have a life of dignity in their new home.”

She decided to formalise her work and enhance her qualifications by obtaining a TAFE certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and the Cambridge CELTA. With these credentials in hand, she started researching where she might best be able to help others.

“I’m a very shy person really,” she says.

“But I rocked up to the UOW College, walked up to the reception quite timidly, and asked if they were looking for TESOL teachers.”

“I wanted to know everything about the College before I started teaching, and asked to be able to read all its policies so I would know how everything is connected. I asked to observe a class and ended up teaching it.”

Committed to lifelong learning

That was the start of her 20-year career at the College, in which she has helped thousands of students, both domestic and international, access education.

“The College has always been warm and supportive. It is a very strong community, and it was a lovely place for me as a new immigrant to Australia,” she says.

“And that’s how I like to make our students feel now. I tell all my students to not be afraid to get information – to realise they are human beings and to remember they are citizens of the world. I tell them to take an interest in what is going on in the world as they are not going to achieve things alone, but as a community.”  

She says one of the most important lessons she has learned is that being open to different ideas is crucial and arming yourself with knowledge is essential to success.  

“I always say my classroom is a place of knowledge exchange. I am constantly learning or unlearning from my students, not just teaching them, and we all have to be open to learning every day."