Highlights
of the year

We take a look back at some of the moments that stood out

Awards

MECA was humbled to be recognised as ‘Organisation of the Year 2022’ at the 2022 Blacktown City Multicultural Awards organised by Blacktown City Council for its outstanding contribution to the local community and exceptional and progressive leadership. This is a testimony to our wonderful community.
We were delighted to see our former colleague, Emma Smith receiving Westfield Local Hero 2021 award and the government of New South Wales’s ‘Community Service Award’ for her outstanding contributions to the community, especially in the Youth Work by honorable member of parliament Mr. Edmond Atalla. We would like to thank Mr. Edmond Attalla and the respected premier Mr. Dominic Perrottet for nominating and acknowledging Emma’s and MECA’s contributions.

Harmony Week

Harmony week is the celebration of inclusiveness, respect, and a sense of belonging for all who are living in Australia.
Inspite of having COVID-19 challenges, MECA with other 15 service providers in Blacktown LGA managed to run successful virtual events during Harmony week 2022. Using various online platforms, a community Story Sharing Session, Stakeholders forum, and art competition was arranged to provide an opportunity for culturally diverse people to come together in different ways to embrace diversity, multiculturalism, and Harmony.

Refugee Week

Refugee Week 2022 events were organised in partnership with other 17 stakeholders to celebrate, educate and discuss the call to action for the community members in making former refugees feel welcomed in our LGA.
This year’s event was spread across the entire Refugee week with a variety of event segments that included Refugee Walk to Northern Beaches, Cook and Share Facebook live session, Trauma-Informed Yoga session, Art Therapy session, Movie night, and the Community Celebration event. Yoga, Art, Walk & Talk, cook & Share and Family Movie Night – these various event segments provided an equal opportunity to the members from refugee as well as mainstream community to express themselves by using these different forms of expressions, build social connections, create awareness and understand the process of healing together. The event featured insights from our beloved Refugee Communities in accordance to their settlement journey and opportunities for Mainstream and refugee communities alike to draw upon shared hardship to heal wounds, to learn from each other and to move forward.

Chifley Brunch:

Affordable snack service by students for students

MECA and the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) partnered to deliver a leadership project at Chifley College Senior Campus in Mount Druitt, funded by Multicultural NSW.

The project ran from late April to early August and involved a group of Year 11 students designing and implementing a project that would foster peace and harmony within their school community. The project was centred upon IEP’s concept of positive peace, being “the attitudes, structures and institutions that underpin and sustain peaceful societies.” The students participated in several workshops that helped them to develop their understanding of positive peace, in addition to attending an excursion to the Sydney Jewish Museum. The project received seed funding of $5,000.00 for the students to design and implement a positive peace project within their own school community.

The students chose to create a weekly affordable snack service that runs during their school recess break. This project was chosen by the students in response to the lack of affordable food services accessible on campus. Great leadership and creativity was displayed by all the students involved and their efforts were celebrated at the launch of the project, attended by representatives from MECA and IEP. Profits from food sales are reinvested into the project to keep it going and the students will be expanding the project to include ice-cream.

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