Connecting Communities

The program includes training, workshops, and communities of practice, available to recipients of the Supporting Multicultural and Faith Communities to Prevent Family Violence Grant.

Practitioners and organisations who work with multicultural and faith communities have unique strengths, knowledge, and experience. They also have unique needs, aims and challenges, which warrant specific support and attention.

Multicultural Centre for Women’s Health and Safe and Equal have partnered to deliver Connecting Communities together. Through this partnership and Connecting Communities, we aim to create generative spaces for shared learning, connection, and collective care and action. This program is funded by the Victorian Department of Families, Fairness and Housing.

Violence prevention practitioners who work in multicultural and faith-based communities face unique challenges. These challenges can include backlash, racism, and resistance, which can significantly impact on practitioners’ professional and personal lives. Currently, there are limited resources or tools to support practitioners or address these challenges.

Promoting gender equality and challenging racism. Multicultural and faith communities face racism, xenophobia and faith-based discrimination (e.g. Islamaphobia, anti-semitism). These cannot be separated from how multicultural and faith communities experience sexism and gender inequality. Therefore, it is important that this overlap and the unique experiences of multicultural and faith communities directly inform work to prevent family violence.

Practitioners who work with multicultural and faith-based organisations have unique strengths and face unique challenges. They may have specialist expertise, which draws on shared community experiences of resilience, survival and collective care. They may also understand common community experiences of displacement, isolation and systemic exclusion, as well as culturally specific challenges involved in shifting gender norms.

Connecting Communities aims to connect practitioners with each other, create opportunities for them to share knowledge and experiences, as well as providing support and a sense of community.

To find out more, email the MCWH and Safe and Equal team at multicultural@safeandequal.org.au.

Connecting Communities is a partnership between Multicultural Centre for Women’s Health and Safe and Equal, and is supported by the Victorian Government.