Community Ambassador Project
Meet the Community Ambassadors
Our Community Ambassadors are active members of the Monash community. To help you to get to know them, they have shared a little bit about who they are:
Tess Marotta and Jayden Yu are no longer part of the project due to other commitments.
The role of a Community Ambassador
The Community Ambassador Project is coordinated by Monash Council in partnership with community groups and service providers, supported by funds from the State Government.
Community Ambassadors make the following contributions:
- Share with Council their thoughts and priorities for promoting social cohesion and community harmony
- Participate in project planning and contribute to consultative processes
- Help Council identify appropriate activities that strengthen neighbourliness
- Shape training in community leadership and bystander intervention
- Shape strategies to help mainstream groups engage with CALD groups and to also develop their capabilities to implement change
- Strengthen formal and informal networks in the community
The Community Ambassadors are also available to support you! Council can put local organisations, community groups and clubs in touch with the Community Ambassadors. They are all willing and available to share their knowledge and experiences, to offer a culturally diverse perspective, and to create stronger connections across the Monash community.
The Community Ambassador Project
Monash Council is delivering a number of projects as part of a program known as “Hello Neighbour”. This program is aimed at promoting neighbourliness and building connected communities across the city. Council recognises these projects are important because many parts of our Monash are experiencing rapid change.
The City of Monash is a vibrant, thriving, multicultural community. Results of Council’s annual community surveys continue to show the Monash community is highly accepting of people from diverse cultures.
One of the initiatives of Hello Neighbour is the establishment of Community Ambassadors. This initiative has provided a unique opportunity for culturally and linguistically diverse community members to advise Council, influence projects planned as part of the Hello Neighbour program and to utilise their new and existing networks to support the broader community. The Community Ambassadors are involved in identifying opportunities to promote social cohesion, community harmony and to deliver initiatives which help residents to feel belonging, connection and safety.
Council’s Hello Neighbour program seeks to address racism and discrimination through relevant community forums and bystander intervention training. National research shows that racism is most often experienced in people’s neighbourhood, in shops and or in workplaces. But it can also emerge in other spaces, such as public transport, at sporting events or schools (Scanlon Foundation Mapping Social Cohesion Report, 2017).
Further research, undertaken for the Racism. It stops with me campaign, found the experience of racism impacts self-worth, and also people’s ability to work and study, their physical health and even life expectancy. But, pleasingly, local research shows there is very strong agreement the Monash community is accepting of people from diverse cultures, more so than average across metropolitan Melbourne.
The Community Ambassador Project will greatly assist Council to achieve its priority of promoting inclusion and participation for all (Monash Health and Wellbeing Plan).
This project has been supported with funding from the State Government (Department of Premier and Cabinet) Community Harmony Program – a program designed to promote neighbourliness and belonging through a range of intercultural, interfaith and intercommunity interaction, promoting understanding and celebrating shared values.
More information
Cultural Diversity Community Development Officer
Kate Wijeyesinghe (she/her)
Phone: 9518 3241
Email: kate.wijeyesinghe@monash.vic.gov.au