A conversation with Amy Nguyen – Zen Tea Lounge
In a quiet area located in the middle of Smithfield, a restaurant café lies surrounded by industry and factories offering a unique but essential service. Zen Tea Lounge has been operating to support the community by helping its women endangered by domestic violence. Through services such as their restaurant and wellness programs, Zen Tea Lounge is looking to empower the women who come under their care and re-usher them back into society as warriors. The restaurant and café (which doubles up as an eatery and tea lounge) employ these women, upskill them with hospitality skills, and pay them to continue supporting their families before they’re ready to choose their own path. When I first heard about this organisation and restaurant, I was utterly intrigued and went to speak to Amy Nguyen who’s a founding member.
In a quiet area located in the middle of Smithfield, a restaurant café lies surrounded by industry and factories offering a service that’s truly unique but essential service. Zen Tea Lounge has been operating to support the community by helping its women endangered by domestic violence. Through services such as their restaurant and wellness programs, Zen Tea Lounge is looking to empower the women who come under their care and re-usher them back into society as warriors. The restaurant and café (which doubles up as an eatery and tea lounge) employ these women, upskill them with hospitality skills, and pay them to continue supporting their families before they’re ready to choose their own path. When I first heard about this organisation and restaurant, I was utterly intrigued and went to speak to Amy Nguyen who’s a founding member.
D: “How did you form Zen Tea Lounge?”
Amy: “Zen Tea Lounge foundation was first conceived as a way for me to challenge mental health. There was a lady who was helping me with tea orders online who were affected by domestic violence. She wasn’t making enough money so we set up this tea house in Smithfield to employ her so she could look after her son and provide her with a more stable income. Eventually, people started hearing about us and donated money which enabled us to build this place up. We decided to expand and bring in more vulnerable women and see far we extend our reach. We’ve heard so many bad stigmas about women in our area like they’re lazy, or they’re just dependent on the social system particularly when they’re in abusive relationships. We eventually started getting a lot of women coming through. One that I remember, was a woman who was in an abusive relationship for 20 years and she told me ‘I’m ready for change.’”
D: “Yeah that’s quite interesting that someone was able to finally break out of that. I think emotional abuse relationships are often really tough to spot, particularly in your involved, because it’s not quite as apparent as physical abuse and there’s often so much emotion and manipulation involved.”
Amy: “In many instances, it can cause more damage than physical abuse. The longer the abuse the worse it will be for the person because the perpetrators are often narcissists that talk down to you and take away your power. People who come to us for help are very brave. Often these women have a fear of trying anything because they don’t have many skills or toolsets to empower themselves.”
For context, Amy is referring to many of the immigrant women who make up a large population within the South-West area who often don’t know English and lack skills/knowledge/help to take care of themselves and find work. Combined with the trauma from their abusive domestic situations, these women are left with very few options which are what makes Zen Tea Lounge and other domestic violence organisation’s programs so important.
Amy: “Everything single dollar we make here at the restaurant is re-invested back into our programs. We do self-defence workshops, stress reduction and MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction). We try to incorporate psychology-based techniques into our programs to ensure they’re equipped with the best help possible. The goal is for these women to transit out of our restaurants and finds employment on their own in a job of their choosing so they can re-take back their lives.”
D: “So, the restaurant and café you‘ve built here is mainly part of your program as a form of rehabilitation and skill-building for the women who come under your care and, undergo other forms of wellness programs during their time with you. Eventually, these women will be recovered and upskilled to re-enter society again.”
Amy: “Correct, the tea lounge here is part of our work-readiness program. We are trying to make a movement here in the South-West. The foundation has released a lot of initiatives to raise awareness of domestic violence and get the community more engaged. It’s such an important message for us to raise because many women are stuck in these abusive relationships and that trauma transfers on to their kids. They adapt to those abusive behaviours because it’s what they’ve grown up seeing. What I often get is 20-year old men calling me and saying ‘I’ve turned into my dad or step-dad and I hate it and that breaks my heart.”
“So that’s Zen and our motivation for what we do. We’re run by an army of volunteers and they provide the backbone for the change we are trying to do for the community. We run many programs for kids too to help develop their emotional intelligence while they’re young. We want to make sure these kids are more in touch with how they feel and knowing what to do when they feel negative emotions.”
D: “That’s such a magnificent cause and I think it’s one that really needs more attention amongst our community. I think it’s particularly important for children to develop their emotional intelligence early because I think it’s one of the key elements that many first-generation born children here lack particularly with the way many of us were raised. I don’t think there’s a lot of mechanisms out there currently that helps to instil useful information about self-awareness or emotional intelligence, so this is a great movement.”
D: “When did you start the restaurant and café part of the foundation. Why food?”
Amy: “Why not! Who doesn’t love food?! Initially, we conceived it as a tea lounge because we use tea as a medication. Tea is a great reliever of stress and food is the same way. We discovered food is a great way of connecting people. People often come to us with no skills and no sense of their own identity. Cooking is one of the skills we wanted to offer and we have a cookbook of 40 dishes that all our women here will learn to cook. They know how to cook everything and consistently. They don’t need any qualifications before entering our doors. This helps to increase their confidence, build cooking skills to help feed their families and set them up with a strong foundation to go out and maybe open up their own café or work elsewhere.
Zen Tea Lounge was built as a refuge for our women and even our customers. What’s lovely is that our customers know that so when they come here, they’re often very respectful. What I see on a daily basis here, our women will be coming to work in tears and coming home in tears because it’s a very emotional time for them but they push through and you can see the progress along their journey. They are warriors.”
D: “Tell me about the pandemic last year? Because your services would’ve been quite difficult to offer during that time. How did you cope?”
Amy: “We were closed for 4 weeks during that period. We were so stressed and we were all in tears. The uncertainty was scary and for our women who had no partners or were distant from their families, and combined with their trauma, the stress levels were just so high so it was a really tense period. When JobKeeper came out we had never been so proud to be Australian so that really helped. We created and delivered some food hampers to deliver to our clients and the women in the community. The local community helped us by getting our takeaway and we moved forward with the ready-made meals. Not many people were doing the ready-made meals at the time so that helped us through that period. Eventually, things started to become more normal, people started coming back to Zen and we managed to get a few grants. We have aspirations to scale up our services to wanted to push on with that.”
D: “So what are your plans at the moment regarding the expansion of your services?”
Amy: “We had plans to open up our services in Melbourne this month, however, they’re currently in lockdown so we’ll have to see when it’s more appropriate to open that up.”
D: “Tell me about the pipeline of clients coming through, does it ever get overwhelming? It’s such a prevalent issue in our community.”
Amy: “Yeah, it’s difficult to say sometimes because our programs vary so much. Some of our clients stay with us for six months and some might even stay for two years – it’s just dependant on the case. It’s up to them when they come in and we leave it up to them when they want to leave.”
D: “With that unpredictability, are you ever under-resourced?”
Amy: “Always. We are always under-resourced because we’re a charity that relies on volunteers so it’s difficult sometimes. These programs involve us managing cases and writing up reports like suicidal cases or participants experiencing depression. We are desperate for funding right now that we will use to employ key members who will take the professional work off our shoulders and further resources who can handle administration for us. We’re always outnumbered so we need that extra funding for not only recognition and assistance, but to also ensure that our current staff/volunteers are adequately trained.”
D: “Hopefully you guys get more recognition and more of the resources that you need. It’s incredibly important and I’m sure we’re all grateful for programs like yours being available in our community. Before we cap off, what’s your favourite dish and how much does this community mean to you?”
Amy: “Haha, I’m a big fan of the crispy skin chicken with pho noodle soup. If it’s not that, we currently have a tofu teriyaki dish that’s highly addictive and I’ve had it every day so far. With the community, they’re everything. We’re made up of an army of volunteers and the community are the ones that really help to drive us. Everyone that chooses to stay with us lights up a fire in us because we all know what our purpose is. It takes the whole community to support our women, we can’t do it by ourselves so that’s why I’m very grateful.”
The interview ends there as Amy and I had been talking for well over an hour at this point discussing other topics that aren’t completely covered in this interview. It’s one of the more insightful and refreshing conversations I’ve had this year with very real issues that our community faces. Zen Tea Lounge foundation plays a pivotal role in battling domestic violence not only after the fact but also in preventative measures as well. If you have any capacity in your day or you’re interested in their services, please do not feel afraid to visit them. Looking to get involved? You can find the link to donate, volunteer or order their food here.
Who: Zen Tea Lounge Foundation
Website: https://www.zentealoungefoundation.org.au/
Contact number: 0406 018 444
Location: 15/108 Percival Rd, Smithfield NSW 2164