Our Story

Every week for three years, before Activ8 Community had a name, an office, or a single dollar of funding, our founder Tarik Monhem made time to sit with a group of men — mostly aged over 55, many navigating separation or divorce, and many carrying the quiet weight of feeling pushed out of their own children’s lives. There was no program, no funding, no organization behind it. Just Tarik, showing up, week after week, because he’d noticed something the system kept missing: these men didn’t need to be managed. They needed to belong.

That weekly gathering was only part of the picture. Alongside it, years of grassroots volunteering — including with Community Minds Ltd and An-Nahda Youth Association — gave Tarik a much broader view of what was happening across South West Sydney’s diverse communities. Time and again, he saw migrants, refugees, and CALD community members experiencing displacement and cultural disconnection, often positioned as passive recipients of services rather than active participants in the community around them.

Together, these experiences shaped a simple, powerful belief: most people don’t want to be treated as needy. They want to be needed. Give someone a role to play, a community that genuinely cares whether they show up, and everything else — opportunity, stability, purpose — tends to follow.

Activ8 Community exists to turn that belief into something structured and lasting: building programs that give isolated men, women, new arrivals, and mature-age migrants and refugees across South West Sydney a genuine part to play in the community they belong to — not just a service to receive. Tarik now leads a small team of community-minded changemakers who share his conviction — that marginalised and isolated people aren’t problems to be solved, but community members with the skills, wisdom, and desire to help shape the communities they want to belong to.