Page 6 - Synovum Care Magazine

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MEET THE TEAM AT BEXLEY
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Meet the team

Raju Puri

Born in Nepal, fell in love on Yahoo and found Australia on Google

Raju Puri has been employed by Synovum Care since 2013. Born in India, he moved to Nepal at age
four with his parents and two sisters. The family lived in one room with no electricity - Raju
remembers gathering wood for cooking and doing his homework with his brothers and sisters with
only a homemade kerosene lamp for light.

At age 13 Raju’s parent decided to move back to India. His older sister had just got married and his
younger sister was still in primary school, so the best option for Raju would be to go to the private
school in Nepal. He reminisced about three fantastic years there with special memories of the soccer
World Cup as the students were allowed to stay up late into the night to watch the games. Relatives
came to visit him and his parents always sent gifts – mainly his favourite foods from his mum (typical
mum)! .
'It would be great to undersand dementia more''

At 16, Raju returned to India and spent the next year caring for his parents who were both in ill health at the time. At 17
he moved to Butwal where he began his Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science and met his future wife Rangu – all thanks
to Yahoo! It was the year 2000 and it was becoming very popular for young men and women to connect via the internet.
Raju eventually moved to Kathmandu to be near Rangu and lived there for the next three years. He travelled to his
home village for one month of the year to celebrate two major Hindu festivals - Dashain and Tihar. During Dashain family
members come together to pray for blessings in the year ahead.

Raju and Rangu got married and started thinking about the future - this time it was Google’s turn to make them both fall
in love – with Australia. They arrived here on 30 January 2009 and, while Rangu stayed in Sydney to study, Raju and some
friends went to work on farms and vineyards in Queensland, Victoria and Tasmania. He recalls working for ten hours
straight in the freezing cold on a vineyard in Tasmania and had to resign while ‘apologising profusely’ to the owner as he
found it impossible to work in such cold temperatures.

Raju eventually came back to Sydney and, in 2012, began working at Synovum Care Bexley through an agency. After six
months Raju and was invited to become an employee of Synovum Care and he hasn’t looked back. ‘When I worked for
the cleaning company, it was just a job’ says Ranju, ‘working for Synovum Care, I got to know the residents better and
took pride in my work’.

There is so much variety in his role at Synovum Care that the work day flies in. He considers one of the residents Robert
like a brother and Robert’s mum is his ‘Australian mum’. When she calls to speak to Robert on the phone, she insists on
speaking to Raju too.

Every job has its ups and downs but overall Raju is very happy at Synovum Care Bexley. His attitude is that when you are
at work you need to work. Be punctual and work hard and don’t talk about people. When managers and team members
are professional, it is a much better environment to work in for everyone. Everyone has different views but if you are a
good worker and nice to your team members you create a good workplace for everyone – a place that you can look
forward to coming to.

Raju enjoyed the recent Vision & Values workshop he did with Synovum Care and looks forward to more training. He is
particularly interested to find out more about dementia and how it affects residents and their behaviour. ‘It would be
great to understand them more’ he says.

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