On March 28, Macquarie University and the Australian Government’s Department of Immigration and Citizenship Partnerships Program will launch StepOne – an online Community Harmony Guide that will assist Councils and community groups to implement community harmony initiatives in their local areas.
Macquarie University, through its Centre for Research on Social Inclusion, has undertaken intensive research over the last couple of years that indicates a need for more in depth information about the types of community harmony projects taking place around the country.
A key feature of the site, which is funded by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, is a set of downloadable ‘best practice’ case studies, which cover a range of communities and issues. The case studies are mainly focused on initiatives that foster positive relationships between different cultural groups in the local area.
The site is especially focused on those initiatives that:
- build positive and sustained relations
between communities - reduce racism and negative
stereotypes - get communities working together and
interacting - deal with the ‘difficult stuff’ not just
celebrating multiculturalism - move beyond the ‘multicultural
festival’ model (food, dance etc)
After several years of research, Dr Amanda Wise, from the Centre for Research on Social Inclusion, produced the content for the site. She said Local Government is crucial in managing community harmony and fostering better relationships between groups.
“A lot of conflicts and tensions initiate locally, but grow to have national implications, as we have seen with the Cronulla riots,” she said. “While our research has indicated that racial problems are not extremely wide spread, we have found that where problems do exist, they are quite serious. “Community harmony can be inhabited by everyday discomforts around cultural differences, such as manners, languages and ways of using space, and these can sometimes boil over
to cause tensions.Local Government is ideally placed at the frontline, ready to work with communities to prevent incidents and racial tensions before they become a problem.”
Amanda Wise said many Councils are looking for tools to deal with some of the more difficult issues and that StepOne aims to assist with this.
“Many Councils hold festivals to show they are supportive of different races, but are searching for strategies for dealing with the actual tensions themselves,” she said. “They look to other Councils to see what they are doing, and while there are some good initiatives out there, the information available is abstract or a snapshot and does not provide enough detail.
“StepOne will make available a range of project models. It will provide honest, in depth case studies that can be downloaded and read thoroughly, along with do’s and dont’s for planning your own Council project. Contact details will also be available so that readers can follow up with Councils that actually have the experience of running the project.”
Amanda Wise said that her research has found community harmony to be very much place specific, and differs dramatically depending on physical space (particularly the town centre), demographic make up and so forth.
“For this reason, StepOne will feature case studies from a wide range of Councils, including regional and city areas, and overseas,” she said. “Once it is live, it will become a growing tool, which will be regularly updated with new case studies and information. It will feature a section where Councils can download and fill out a proposal form with their projects and initiatives for inclusion on the site.”
After the launch in March, the Steering Committee will tour Australia, visiting cities and towns they believe they can make a difference in. They will then take the Council through the StepOne site and identify ways they can improve community harmony in their area.
The launch will be held at the Ashfield Town Hall in New South Wales, with a number of Councils that have implemented interesting and innovative projects giving presentations at the event.
