Deadline: 28-May-21
The State Government of Victoria has announced the 2nd round of Priority Response to Multicultural Communities During Coronavirus (COVID-19) Program to multicultural and faith organisations in Victoria to ensures organisations can effectively respond to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and its impacts on multicultural and faith communities.
The program will ensure organisations can respond to the current health crisis and its impacts for multicultural and faith communities, with a focus on providing support to those communities and areas most in need, and in particular to respond to the distinct and disproportionate challenges experienced by CALD women and young people and new and emerging communities.
It will also promote capacity building of local community network and organisations.
Objectives
The key objectives of the program are to:
- maintain low number and proportion of positive coronavirus (COVID-19) cases in Victorian multicultural and faith communities;
- increase the number and proportion of individuals testing for coronavirus (COVID-19), support vaccine preparedness, and support high number and proportions of individuals being vaccinated in Victoria’s multicultural and faith communities;
- improve understanding and adherence to Victorian government health directions in Victoria’s multicultural and faith communities;
- build stronger partnerships across the Victorian multicultural sector;
- build the capacity of local community networks, organisations and services to support prevention and improve preparedness against any future coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreaks;
- build digital literacy of seniors’ groups to increase ability to safely engage and be socially connected online;
- build the capacity and delivery of communityled health communications; and
- increase understanding of barriers to health participation and engagement by multicultural and faith communities.
What can be funded
Program funding is directed towards activities that will support multicultural and faith communities to protect themselves from becoming positive to coronavirus (COVID-19), and that supports individuals to follow health directions, including:
- Purchase of items
- emergency relief essentials (including food);
- personal health safety items such as masks and hand sanitiser;
- communications equipment, technology, and social media advertising; and
- transportation costs for vaccinations and/or medical appointments and pharmacies for multicultural seniors.
- Delivery of services
- community engagement;
- health communication and education, and translation of health messages, consistent with all current health directions and advice from the Department of Health;
- outreach and community support, including translation services as part of this support;
- research and community consultation; and
- training and mentoring programs.
- Any other activities as identified by communities and their representatives and accepted by Multicultural Affairs, which supports multicultural and faith communities to:
- protect themselves from becoming positive to coronavirus (COVID-19) and supports testing and individuals to follow heath directions;
- address social and economic coronavirus (COVID-19) risk factors and vulnerabilities;
- supports the creation of community-led health communications;
- contributes to a better understanding of multicultural and faith communities’ communication consumption and preferences and barriers to health participation and engagement;
- provides novel solutions for known communication and content development barriers and challenges for multicultural and faith; or
- advances seniors’ internet accessibility, digital literacy and access to computers and online engagement.
Priority applications:
- New and emerging multicultural and faith communities.
- Organisations delivering multicultural and faith youth-led and/or projects that mostly support multicultural youth.
- Organisations delivering multicultural and faith women-led and/or projects that mostly support multicultural women.
Eligibility Criteria
The eligibility criteria for the program is as follows:
- organisations must be one of the following types:
-
- local council, or
- not-for-profit organisation that delivers services to community, or
- regional or state-wide peak multicultural/interfaith organisation, or
- faith-based or community-led organisation representing multicultural and faith communities
- organisations must have a current Australian Business Number (ABN) and have held that ABN at 30 June 2019
- organisations must be operating throughout the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and have the capacity to immediately deliver support and services to multicultural and faith communities
- organisations must accept it will deliver all project activities in compliance with the health directions of the Victorian Chief Health Officer and the Victorian Government Department of Health
- schools, registered training organisations and TAFEs are not eligible to apply for funding
- universities, however, are eligible to apply for:
- activities aligned with the objectives of the program, focused on multicultural student cohorts, for example international students.
- research projects that support the objectives of the program
- as a partner with a community organisation on a project aligned to the objectives of the program.
For more information, visit https://www.vic.gov.au/priority-response-multicultural-communities-during-coronavirus-covid-19