Victoria

The Women Creating Harmony grants program, administering a total of $250 000, was created to support women from various cultural and religious backgrounds to develop cross-cultural and interfaith understanding. Thirty-four grants of $5000 or $10 000 were awarded. The program is a partnership between the Victorian Multicultural Commission and the Office for Women’s Policy within the Department of Planning and Community Development.

In 2006, the Victorian Government held a Premier’s women’s summit, Respecting Diversity: Harmony in Practice. It brought together women from diverse backgrounds to discuss cross-cultural challenges and promoted women-led, cross-cultural respect and understanding. More than 200 women attended to discuss multiculturalism, access to services, justice and safety, challenging stereotypes, and pathways to education, training and employment.

The Victorian Multicultural Commission and the Department of Justice jointly provided $80 000 to Project Respect, which aims to support victims of people trafficking and contribute to community understanding of the issue. Since funding commenced in 2007, the project has developed a set of protocols and information packages. A reference group, with representatives from both the government and community sector, has been formed to guide future project work.

The Victorian Government has allocated $3.1 million over four years from 2006 to 2010 to the Language Services Strategy to improve interpreting and translating services. A key focus of the strategy in 2007–08 was on assisting aging migrants to access aged care services.

The Victorian Government provided $960 000 to the community-based refugee health nurses program to increase refugee access to primary health services and to improve the responsiveness of those services. Refugee health nurses are based in thirteen metropolitan and three regional locations. During 2006–07, over 1600 people were assisted and over 3700 sessions were provided.

The Victorian Government, through the Department for Education and Early Childhood Development, invested $7.1 million into schools to help with transition activities for newly arrived students. An additional $300 000 a year was also provided in support for refugees to improve their English language skills for 2007–2010.

Consumer Affairs Victoria funded two projects to help newly arrived communities understand tenancy rights and to promote sustainable tenancies. They are the African Refugee Orientation Program, which delivers training on tenancy rights and responsibilities for African migrant communities, and the Western Refugee Rental Project, which aims to maximise access to the private rental market and promote sustainable tenancies among Southern Sudanese communities.

The Department of Human Services funded three Public Health Research projects on refugee health issues in 2006–07. The projects focused on the social practices and health literacy of newly arrived African communities, and how refugee youths access, interpret and implement sexual health information.