ANTI-RACISM & MYTH BUSTING CASE STUDIES

The Living Library is a community-based initiative that aims to bring people together through one-to-one conversation and interaction and thereby encourage understanding, challenge negative stereotypes, and reduce prejudice. This way, it further aims to use the simple yet powerful strategy of Living Library to build social cohesion.

The consultation sessions with these groups sought to gather information on people's thoughts regarding the increasing cultural diversity within Holland Park, their thoughts and experiences on racism and any suggestions that would improve race relations and strengthen the community in Holland Park.

This project aimed to establish how: Attitudes to racial groups are formed in certain rural areas; how these attitudes are permeated through local opinion makers or other influential people; how to achieve change on a long term basis; identify the nature of community relations, (inter) ethnic relations and race relations in selected rural communities.

The aim of ‘Belonging to Blackburn with Darwen’ was to build more cohesive and, by definition, stronger communities. The borough recognises that this can only be achieved by strengthening citizenship and forging pride of place - a common understanding of a shared future where all citizens from every economic and cultural background are personal stakeholders.

Migrants who contributed to building the Broken Hill community early last century are often been overlooked in Broken Hill's official histories and the overall formation of Broken Hill community. This project aims to share the migrant history in Broken Hill with the entire community and help people appreciate migrants as important part of their history and community.

This project by the Immigrant Women Speak Out group aimed to work in educational, interactive and non-threatening ways with young and older migrant and refugee women on dealing with Racism.

Involved a conference to identify barriers to equitable access to services and full participation in the community faced by Indigenous and ethnic people; and a forum on "Promoting Good Community Relations" which focused on the reduction of racism and discrimination amongst young people in the community. It also included school peer training sessions.

The Goodness and Kindness Program was initiated in NSW in 2002 as a non-profit grassroots initiative by people of the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths to: Address division in our society and to promote increased action and cooperation on our common values.

This project worked with communities to document the nature and extent of racism and provide regular reporting on incidents across the state. It provided support and resources to ethnic communities in order to combat racism; and worked with mainstream agencies to increase awareness of racism. It also developed training materials aimed at perpetrators of racism.

The Living Library is about building social cohesion in the community and increasing acceptance and understanding. It’s about celebrating diversity and fostering respect and appreciation of any community’s diversity. Personal contact is very powerful in breaking down barriers – it’s very hard to maintain misconceptions and stereotypes when personal exchanges are shared a positive way.

The aim of the project was twofold, to educate and increase the awareness of our own students about racism, stereotyping and multiculturalism and secondly for them to have a voice in the broader community about their perspectives on these issues. The students made a film and teachers made a resource kit to accompany it, thereby creating a resource that would be used in all schools.