Thank you to our communities for the strength and resilience you have demonstrated through some challenging times. The people of NSW care about human suffering, and we need to extend that compassion to each other as we witness ongoing suffering in the world.
Closer to home, I was proud of the way our community and faith leaders rallied together in response to the tragic incidents in Bondi Junction and Wakeley in April. It was also a privilege to work alongside the Premier, the Minister for Multiculturalism, the NSW Police Force and other NSW government agencies who came together to support impacted communities and promote community harmony.
In this newsletter, we showcase two other Multicultural NSW resilience building projects – the new COMPACT Digital Youth Alliance, and highlights from the launch of CONTINUUM, our powerful new digital storytelling platform.
Domestic and family violence is an issue that affects all communities in NSW, and we have all seen reports of the adverse impact on women and children in particular. I have had the privilege of providing advice to government as a member of the Coercive Control Implementation and Evaluation Taskforce, as well as Chairperson of this Taskforce’s CALD Communities Reference Group. An outcome of that work is the NSW government’s coercive control advertising campaign tailored for multicultural communities, which launched this week. I urge you to help support this campaign by sharing translated resources to your networks.
And, it’s National Reconciliation Week. Now More Than Ever, is this year’s theme, reflecting the resilience of First Nations people and a reminder that we all have an ongoing role in tackling the unfinished business of reconciliation. As I said at the SBS panel discussion this week, as a nation, it has taken us almost 250 years to acknowledge that some actions in the past were wrong. While we can’t undo historical injustices, we can all work together to make sure they are never repeated.
Joseph La Posta
CEO, Multicultural NSW
