Since 2018, Multicultural Australia has partnered with Centacare Far North Queensland to improve outcomes for clients in more parts of Queensland.
Our partnership with Centacare Multicultural Service in Cairns enables knowledge sharing, innovation, and capacity building – and it also does more to create welcome and belonging in Queensland with LUMINOUS in the Regions now a staple on the Cairns event calendar.
Andrea Obeyesekere, Senior Manager of Centacare FNQ’s Multicultural Services, said the longstanding partnership significantly benefits both organisations.
“We’ve had a beautiful relationship with Multicultural Australia for many years, particularly because they are from the big smoke, and they have a lot more experience than we have had in the migrant settlement space,” Andrea said.
“Because we are regional and we are small, we are able to connect with all our community leaders and we’re able to work on the settlement of the newest communities with them.”
“[Through our partnership], we work together, and we see the strengths of both regional and city settlement, and we work on those together.”
For Multicultural Australia CEO, Christine Castley, using place-based expertise to deliver services in community, is one of the many strengths of the partnership.
“It’s really important that services are delivered at a local level – through partnerships – so that we can support each other in tackling the needs that arise,” Christine said.
“And that’s how our partnership with Centacare has come about; by giving a really strong foundation in delivering services as they are needed in Queensland.”
“Some of the things we have done together has been about bringing LUMINOUS to Cairns. Working together with Centacare FNQ, it still has that really strong local dimension, but we’ve brought an event that has had much broader application right across the state in terms of creating an event that is ultimately about changing the conversation, bringing people together and creating connection.”
