Ethnic Communities Council of WA aiming to create mentoring program for multicultural women

ETHNIC Communities Council of WA vice-president Vivienne Pillay is aiming to create a mentoring program for multicultural women in the 2018-19 financial year.

The North Perth-based organisation is looking to apply for the City of Bayswater’s Community Grants Program, which offers groups to apply a share of $412,000 in funding.

The City will host an information session on May 21 at 5pm at the Civic Centre before the program officially launches on July 1.

Ms Pillay said the organisation recently held an International Women’s Day forum at The Rise in Maylands, where women expressed a need for mentoring.

“We would be very keen to start in a particular location and obviously if we got the funding from the City of Bayswater, it would be a priority and then feed it out from there,” she said.

“It is about bringing everyone together so that you have one voice.

“We all have been working and building our own profile within the wider community and that gives us a lot connections and a lot of people that we can then hopefully align women with, to develop themselves.”

City-based Mental Health Keys founder and multicultural health specialist Tandi Kuwana said she would help form a program, in a bid to open opportunities for women.

“I will try and instil hope in women from culturally diverse communities and reinforce that a woman’s place is not in the kitchen,” she said.

“We can come out of that hole and start changing the narrative in most culturally diverse background about what women should do, about what men should do and moving forward.

“Just being there for those women who are stepping out and are trying to break barriers and offer them an ear and someone to talk to.”

For more information, contact the City on 9270 4122.

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