Keeping It Going
Culturally and Linguistically Diverse People

It is crucial to continue to seek regular feedback and maintain an open dialogue with diverse communities so that you understand their needs and motivations. By building and maintaining strong relationships, you will be well placed to gather useful feedback which will help you to adapt or modify programs as required, and to make positive changes within your sport's culture and environment to ensure everyone is welcomed and included.

Feedback is important if you want to understand why something isn’t working. New programs often take a while to build, and if you’re not getting the uptake you want, the best thing you can do is gather direct feedback from participants, or community leaders, and use the conversation to adapt your sport activities.

• Consider taking 5 minutes at the end of your session to speak to the participants about what they liked, or didn’t like, about the session.
• Speak to the leaders from the community you are working with. This could include organisation leaders, leaders of faith based organisations or prominent members of a specific community.

Remember, listening to feedback is very important and might provide invaluable information to help you tailor your activities to match the interests of the local community.

You could use a free resource like Survey Monkey to help design and distribute a survey. The Club Help website offers three surveys that you can adapt to construct your survey:

• Member Survey
• Volunteer Survey
• Sponsor Survey

Surveys can help you find out more about who lives in your local community, their general interests and sport participation levels. Use this information to identify relevant activities and opportunities for your sport to engage the community and make improvements to what you are already doing. Make sure you consider providing surveys in other languages or in easy English.

While there are many things your organisation can do on your own, collaborating with strategic partners (other than existing partners and sponsors) can help you gain access to more resources, skills and connections. These partnerships will help you to grow your existing activities, skill sets and capabilities and identify what else you can do to keep the momentum going.

Here are some examples of the benefits of strategic partnerships:

• A strategic partnership with decision makers such as local councilors or Members of Parliament may assist in contributing or obtaining resources or funding to make your facilities more welcoming to everyone.
• Connecting with a local law firm may provide support to help review and revise your policies at no cost (refer to Policies and Practice section).
• Your increased focus on supporting people from diverse backgrounds could open doors to new sponsorship or partnership opportunities, and there may be a range of local businesses that would be interested in supporting your organisation beyond your existing sponsor base.

You might want to search for organisations that offer Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives, pro-bono work or corporate workplace giving programs designed to benefit community organisations.

Resources and grants

Sometimes a little extra money will help you to accelerate the activities that support participation by people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

Many local, State and Federal government organisations offer grants to sporting organisations to assist at grassroots level. These grants may focus on participation, facilities, education or leadership. To ensure you are in the loop on these opportunities, you are encouraged to sign up to newsletters from Sport and Recreation Victoria, VicHealth, State Sporting Associations, Vicsport or your local council.

VicHealth provides funding through the Active Club Grants Program and the Innovation Challenge: Sport.

Sport and Recreation Victoria often offer a range of grants for the Victorian sport sector.

Sharing your success stories with other sport organisations can be a great way to demonstrate the work that you have been doing to increase engagement of people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. These stories can generate interest and excitement around your sport or organisation. They can also get more community members interested in the steps your club has taken, expose your club to more potential participants or volunteers, and help build strategic partnerships and attract new sponsors.

These stories can include testimonials, videos filmed on a phone, a page on your website or quotes that can be shared on social media. Remember, a picture tells a thousand words!

It is important to recognise and celebrate the people within your sport who have led the way on boosting participation by everyone. This can include recognition within your organisation, or entering awards offered by other sport sector organisations or local council. Here’s some ideas:

• Offer awards and recognition within your organisation – this might be as simple as certificates and “thank you” letters from committees and recognising champions through award structures (e.g. annual and/or regular awards).
• Take part in the Victorian State Government’s Cultural Diversity Week which is a great way to connect with others and promote the work your organisation is doing.
• Send in nominations for the Victorian Sport Awards.
• Send in nominations for State Sporting Associations awards or local council awards

For more information visit:

• Clearinghouse for Sport – Cultural Diversity in Sport
• Victorian Multicultural Commission
• Centre for Multicultural Youth
• Centre for Culture, Ethnicity and Health