Righteous youth events is heralding the arrival of summer with two free events celebrating International Human Rights Day held on Friday 9 December @ Signal. The first event is Rights at the Round Table, a youth forum on human rights, and is followed by Rights by the River, a culturally diverse youth music festival. The forum kicks off the day from 2-4pm and key speakers will explore ideas and expectations around gender roles. The music festival is from 5-9pm and is headlined by Sydney hip hop heavyweights, Radical Son. Both events are free and open to all!

Applications are now open for the Australian Government's $8.4 million Your Community Heritage program. The funding available for heritage projects ranges from $2,500 up to $500,000. Under this new grant program, communities can now apply for grants to protect and conserve Australia's nationally significant sites, repair local historic places impacted by natural disasters and to identify research, preserve and share local heritage stories. Funding will also be made available for the development of a national heritage community focussed website for communities to preserve and make their heritage stories accessible online. Applications for grants will be open until Tuesday 20 December 2011. 

The Northern Melbourne Institute of TAFE (NMIT) is offering a 12-month combined English and introduction to working in health and community services course for people from refugee and migrant backgrounds. Participants who successfully complete this course can go on to bilingual community and health work, or on to further study in this area.

Care with Me is a Victorian-based community volunteer program that helps all children and young people in government care to receive culturally suitable support. Three separate workshops will be hosted by Ms Jatinder Kau, who specialises in working with CALD communities, and was recently commissioned to prepare research on CALD and refugee communities in the child protection system. For more information and to register for the workshops click on the link below.

A confidential counselling service offering a culturally and gender sensitive approach is now available at the Queen Victoria Women's Centre at 210 Lonsdale Street in Melbourne. The service, which includes bilingual support, is operated by the Victorian Immigrant & Refugee Women's Coalition (VIRWC) and aims to increase the level of support for women from multicultural backgrounds who are suffering from family violence. 

We love to hear what you have planned. You can submit your events and details of any new resources with a multicultural focus via the form on our website. These get added to our online Community Noticeboard and Events Calendar. Selected listings will be included in the VMC Update each fortnight. Click on the link below to find out what's going on around multicultural  Victoria.