With over 26.2% of the Victorian community from diverse backgrounds, in which 14.6% speak little or no English, it became increasingly apparent that as an emergency service organisation, VICSES needed to explore new and innovative ways to enhance their ability to engage effectively with the community to ensure they could respond to their needs and expectations before, during and after emergencies and promote community safety. A lack of capacity to facilitate and address these expectations was isolating over a quarter of the population purely as a result of communication and cultural barriers.

In addition, the demographics of the 5500 VICSES Volunteers does not adequately reflect the community as a whole prompting VICSES to research and create opportunities for local Units to promote volunteer retention strategies that will enable VICSES to ‘transform’ its existing workforce and current work practices thus preparing for the future needs of the organisation.

To address these challenges VICSES released a Culturally and Linguistic Diverse (CALD) Strategy in 2012 which underpins VICSES’s approach to engaging with CALD communities into the future. Initiatives implemented thus far have resulted in:
• Development of partnerships with VICSES units and Migrant Research Centres through the ‘Volunteering in Mainstream Organisations Program’. The partnership with the VICSES Croydon unit and the Migrant Resource Centre Eastern in particular has been particularly successful.
• Creation of pathways for newly arrived migrants to Australia and long term unemployed migrants to volunteer and subsequently enhance their ability to develop networks and secure future employment.
• Through engaging volunteers from a range of different backgrounds VICSES has improved its ability to engage with communities that were previously difficult to access.

These new approaches to engaging with CALD communities will enable VICSES to engage in a more effective and more wide-reaching way in the future with at-risk communities.