Multicultural communities

We work with culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities to make sure they understand their voting rights and participate in our democracy.

To achieve this, we partner with service providers and communities to offer culturally responsive services and promote electoral participation.

Multicultural education and engagement plan

The Multicultural education and engagement plan (MEEP) is our framework for delivering culturally accessible and responsive electoral information and services to Victoria’s large, diverse, and growing multicultural communities.

Download the plan

Our goals

The MEEP will support CALD communities to:

  • trust, understand and access the electoral system
  • learn how to vote correctly and with confidence
  • build lifelong engagement with voting and democracy
  • boost their electoral enrolment and participation. 

Areas of focus

The MEEP has 3 focus areas:

  1. access - improving CALD communities' access to electoral services and processes
  2. knowledge and confidence - strengthening CALD voters' understanding of how to vote and their confidence to vote
  3. relationships, visibility and representation - building our stakeholder relationships and increasing CALD representation in electoral matters. 

Active citizenship workshop for community leaders

Our active citizenship workshop aims to increase community leaders’ political literacy and capacity to make positive change for their community; ultimately leading to increased participation in elections.

The workshop consists of 2 parts:

  1. Be heard: an all-day workshop designed to assist and build participants'knowledge and skills on how to take action step-by-step.
  2. Be informed: a 5-and-half hour workshop for participants who want to better understand government and how preferential voting works.

Both workshops are best suited as part of existing leadership programs. Content is flexible and can be adapted to meet participants’ learning needs.

To enquire about the workshop, contact us.

Community Voice

Community Voice is our CALD advisory group.

It provides expert advice and knowledge to ensure our work is culturally responsive to community needs. It also improves our access to communities and ensures we consult and speak with the right people when developing services and resources. Community Voice meets a twice a year.

Current members include government and non-government CALD workers, ethno-specific service providers and community members.

New members are always welcome. Please contact us to get involved.

Democracy ambassadors

Democracy Ambassadors help their communities to be heard at elections.
Video transcript

The Democracy Ambassador program is about social inclusion. People having a say at the election.

My job is to educate the community about how to vote correctly.

As a democracy ambassador I also work with disability groups, homeless groups and Aboriginal groups as well.

Before the election I want all the community leaders to be more active in the community and help them learn how to vote so the community voices can be heard.

In the information session I teach community about how to enrol, the three levels of government and how to vote correctly.

After the session I realised my community needs more people like me to come and speak to them.

You should book an information session with a Democracy Ambassador because it will help you to learn in a better way in your own language.

Democracy means to me: freedom.