By BRIDGET COOK
A WORKSHOP held in Casey this month opened up the dialogue between culturally diverse communities and service providers in a bid to promote harmony between the two.
About 50 people, representing 26 nationalities, attended the free ‘Building Resilient Communities for the Future: A Community Dialogue’ workshop on Thursday 14 November in Hampton Park.
The workshop was run as part of the Women Against Violent Extremism (WAVE) project, run by the Victorian Immigrant and Refugee Women’s Coalition.
The workshop was one of four events being held across the south east as part of the WAVE project, with the focus on this event being about creating conversations between Cultural and Linguistic Diversity (CALD) communities and service providers.
“This activity aimed to provide conflict resolution knowledge and skills for the CALD communities to prevent damaged relationships which could lead to violent extremism,” Project worker Su Sullivan said.
Ms Sullivan said the workshop was a great success, with the CALD communities being able to express their concerns and their voices were heard by the community officers.
“Participants enjoyed themselves networking, learning about issues in the south-east region and discussing their experiences,” she said.
“Community officers were able to have time to discuss issues with CALD communities.”
Ms Sullivan said as part of the workshop, participants were divided into groups where they actively discussed common issues concerning the south-east region.
“Some of the issues discussed included the lack of social connections and places for socialisation, safety and prevention of violence against women, gambling, drugs and alcohol, homelessness and lack of affordable housing and lack of training, employment pathways and livelihood,” she said.
“They also discussed the lack of information and access to services, lack of public transport and lack of representation of CALD people in social, economic and political aspects of community life.”
Ms Sullivan said the workshop achieved what they hoped with participants learning how to use a dialogue to resolve conflict and issues that could cause community disharmony.
“There were many interesting stories and suggestions of how to build resilient communities,” she said.
As part of the WAVE project, two Women Building Resilient Communities (WBRC) training courses and a WBRC Family Camp have also been held.
The two WBRC training courses were run in June and August, with more than 40 women representing 23 nationalities taking part.
The training course was a seven day program which engaged women in a range of activities to develop confidence, critical thinking, knowledge, skills and leadership qualities.
The WBRC Family Camp was held last month with 97 participants from 34 families signing up.
The camp focused on relationship building within and between families through fun activities and workshops.
WAVE is funded by the Attorney General’s Department under its Building Community Resilience grants program.
