Dora Houpis
When retired Taylors Lakes chemistry and biology teacher Santhana Selvendra came to Australia from Sri Lanka in the 1970s there was nothing for her Hindu community. So she started prayer meetings in her Maidstone home.
When members of her community didn’t fit in her house anymore she drove to the other side of town and started offering services at the Prahran Migrant Centre.
When her father told her she wouldn’t be able to drive to Prahran when she got older, she built he Melbourne Murugan Temple and community centre, in Knight Avenue, North Sunshine.
“I’m very well minded,” she said.
“Maybe, it’s in my nature.”
Ms Selvandra’s inclination to help others in her new homeland for nearly 50 years was recognised recently when she received a Council on the Ageing (COTA) Victoria Senior Achiever Award at this year’s Victorian Senior of the Year Awards.
“God has created you for something to leave behind,” she said.
“Not just to be born and die.”
Ms Selvandra, 83, grew up in the central Sri Lankan town of Nawalapitiya renown for its multiculturalism. Nuns taught her at a Catholic convent until year 10 before she graduated as a teacher with honours in chemistry and biology from the prestigious Jaffna College, in the country’s north.
She migrated to Australia with her doctor husband Selvanayagam Selvendra, a well-known local general surgeon, and their first child.
Ms Selvandra taught at North Sunshine, Sunshine and Hoppers Crossing secondary colleges and Footscracy Girls High School.
Ms Selvandra was also instrumental in introducing Tamil as a VCE subject which was culturally and academically important for her migrant community’s children.
“If it’s a VCE subject, they can score better and get into the courses they want to do,” she said.
