''It was the whitest suburb, and also one of the richest.''

But she was not laughing at the time.

Three years after Mrs Issa arrived as a refugee with her husband and four children, pregnant with her fifth, terrorists destroyed the twin towers in New York City on September 11, 2001.

As a hijab-wearing and statuesque Somali woman, Mrs Issa sometimes felt very alone in that whitest and richest suburb.

And the next year she had what she now describes as her ''pivotal moment'' when she took her youngest daughter, now four, to be enrolled in a kindergarten in Brighton. ''We got a bit of a cold reception, and I really did not think that a four-year-old would understand that, but when we came out she asked me, 'Mum, did they not want me because I'm black?'

''I felt that I knew nothing about the country I had brought my children into, and I wasn't really part of it. And coming from an African communal culture, it really got to me and I felt that I had to do something about that. And that's when I started my mission of integration.''

Today, Mrs Issa is an author, a businesswoman and community leader.

With the help of a Rotary Club grant, this resilient woman transformed her backyard into a public garden, complete with chooks, where she runs regular storytelling sessions that bring women from the middle-class suburb together with former refugees to share stories and better understand each other.

Not only has Mrs Issa learnt from them, but she also feels Australians - many with their near-empty homes and elderly relatives living in aged care facilities - can learn from her heritage, which prizes the role of family and community above all else.

Mrs Issa is one of more than 150 Australians of African heritage who have taken part in the African Leadership Development Program, which is supported by the Victorian government, the department of immigration and others.

The program is designed to strengthen the skills of existing African-Australian leaders who work in community organisations and to offer those opportunities to new and emerging leaders.

Melbourne African community leader Haileluel Gebre-Selassie, chairman of the course, said this year 40 people from 19 African countries would take part in the program. It is, Mr Gebre-Selassie says, designed to make African-Australians and their new neighbours feel more at home with one another, and to address issues faced by African-Australian communities including ''very high'' school dropout rates among young people and the disadvantage faced by their elders, who often laboured as overqualified workers in low-skilled fields.

He said Australian governments could help emerging communities by taking Victoria's lead in supporting the program. ''One of the main reasons why we identified the need for a leadership program is, I think, as we are new to Australia, Australia is new to us,'' he says.

''So I think it's really important to develop some sort of mechanism to be able to [be] strengthening our new capacity, building our capacity, in order to address some small and big challenges.''