New Humans of Australia Facebook page celebrating refugee and migrant stories, going viral

THINGS started slowly for Nicola Gray and her side project. But it has now been viewed by more than a million people and shows the “real Australia” shining through.

Facebook page goes viral for right reasons

THINGS started slowly for Nicola Gray and her side project — a blog of sorts modelled around the hugely successful Humans of New York concept, minus the 15 million followers.

It was August and Ms Gray, a Sydneysider, had posted a photograph and a story about Negar, an Iranian-born Australian whom she’d met and whose story she wanted to share.

She posted it to a handful of followers on the New Humans of Australia Facebook page and it took five days for the first few comments to surface.

“Such a warm, kind looking human,” Bridget Flynn wrote.

“You make Australia proud,” Kanika Al Diges wrote.

Then a little boy named Aylan washed up on a beach in Turkey and Australia woke up. Within a week there was pressure on the government to increase its refugee intake.

Thousands of people held candles aloft for the three-year-old boy at rallies around the country and the then-Abbott-led government agreed to welcome 12,000 people fleeing war.

Negar’s story was the first story shared on the page.

Ms Gray says that’s when something clicked. She posted about Hassan, a former Afghan refugee, on September 13 and it was shared almost 5000 times and viewed by more than a million people.

The page’s author said she was starting to see “the real Australia”.

“That story touched something in people,” Ms Gray told news.com.au. “It’s about someone who arrived by boat. What’s happening in Europe is starting to change people’s perception. That was when the page started getting really popular.”

New Humans of Australia now has more than 32,000 likes. It’s growing by more than 5000 every day.

Ms Gray is not trying to be political. She has a very simple goal: “I just want to tell their stories.”

“So many stories (in the media) are negative and people get lumped together. Storytelling is a powerful way to show people what’s it’s really like.”

She says the hardest part about running the page is not getting refugees to tell their stories but getting them to stop.

“I often get what I want in the first five minutes but they just keep talking. What I get out of it personally is a sense of gratitude but for them it’s quite therapeutic.”

Hassan’s story struck a nerve with a public looking for good news amid so much sadness.

In it, he tells of fleeing the Taliban as a teenager in 1999.

“My father was killed by the Taliban,” he told Ms Gray. “Then, one day, the Taliban came to our village and took my older brother away. The only reason they didn’t get me was because I was visiting my uncle that day.”

Hassan fled to Pakistan where he was separated from his cousin. “I have never seen him since,” he says.

Hassan fled Afghanistan in 1999 and has made a living in Australia helping others.

From Pakistan he flew to Indonesia where he took a boat to Australia.

“I’d never seen the ocean before, I’d never even left my village before. At one point the waves were so huge, I had to tie myself to the boat with my shirt so I wouldn’t fall in.

“We spent 11 nights on the boat, and I was sick the whole time. When the Australian navy found us, they took us to the camp and gave us food and medicine, and only after that did I start to feel alive again.

“I’m so grateful to Australia for helping me, and I feel so lucky.”

Hassan is no longer struggling. These days he runs a charity and views on New Humans of Australia help drive donations.

Ms Gray, who quit her job in March before starting the project, said she’ll continue sharing refugee stories given the overwhelmingly positive response.

“It’s lovely to see what people are doing,” she said.