Across the business, MercyCare staff joined in the excitement of Harmony Week!
Harmony Week is an opportunity to consider the many benefits WA gains from its culturally and linguistically diverse (CaLD) communities. It is also an opportunity for all Western Australians to celebrate our diversity while working to remove barriers in the community.
Here’s a peek at how we celebrated this national event.
Unleashing Our Creativity: Join Our Art Jam!
To celebrate Harmony Week, MercyCare staff were given the opportunity to attend an Art Jam workshop in Mirrabooka or West Perth.
Art Jam workshops are designed and delivered by an art therapist and community arts worker and help participants achieve a creative flow state for self-expression.
Workshop attendees were provided with various art and design books containing patterns and images reflecting diverse cultures. These patterns inspired participants to create designs or copies illustrating their feelings, culture, personality, and personal experiences.
Celebrate Diversity: Multicultural Cuisine Takes the Spotlight
Throughout the week, staff at various locations shared meals showcasing traditional dishes and cuisine. The Business Services and Systems team shared lunch at Baggot House. During the lunch, staff were encouraged to place orange stickers on a world map to show where they were born or their family’s place of origin. The BSS team is undoubtedly diverse!
Ord Street staff enjoyed a potluck lunch while listening to their colleagues Charlene and Evan speak about their Aboriginal and Greek cultures. The presentations were informative and entertaining, giving everyone a greater understanding of each presenter’s connection to their culture.
Staff at MercyCare’s Cannington office brought a plate of food to share for lunch, filling the table with fish curry from Sri Lanka, Kabuli pulao from Afghanistan, Tim Tams from Australia, frittata from Italy and a host of other delicious dishes. Rael (from Kenya) and Pushpa (from Sri Lanka) added a splash of colour to the celebrations by dressing in traditional outfits for the day.
Celebrating Diversity at the Mirrabooka Harmony Festival
MercyCare’s multicultural services team in Mirrabooka proudly supported the annual Harmony Festival, which takes place in the town square each year. The team met residents, spoke to other service providers, and enjoyed catching up with local member Meredith Hammat MLA.
Early Learning Centres’ approached celebrations creatively
Many of MercyCare’s 13 early learning services celebrated Harmony Week, with educators creating engaging activities to help the children celebrate diversity in Western Australia.
Some of those activities included filling sensory tables with orange items to match the colour of harmony, creating artworks using a range of skin-toned paint colours, everybody belongs playdough experience, finding family origins on world maps, and constructing displays filled with objects, instruments and decorations from around the world.
MercyCare is committed to fostering a workplace that reflects contemporary Australian society and the communities we serve. As a workforce, we can speak almost 80 different languages, and more than 25% of staff have a first language other than English.
Our Multicultural Support services are for those facing the greatest challenges settling in Australia: asylum seekers, refugees, humanitarian entrants and new arrivals. We provide settlement services across multicultural family services, multicultural employment services, multicultural women services and much more.
Learn more about MercyCare’s diverse workforce
Learning about MercyCare’s diverse workforce!
Manjusha’s Bio
Business Analyst Lead at MercyCare, Manjusha Subhash, emigrated from Mumbai to Australia in 2013, after her husband received an exciting job opportunity here in Perth.
Learning about MercyCare’s diverse workforce!
Charlene’s Bio
MercyCare Early Learning Service’s Administration Officer, Charlene Assan is a proud Ngadju woman from the Southern Goldfields Region of Western Australia.
Learning about MercyCare’s diverse workforce!
Evan’s Bio
MercyCare Acting Organisational Culture Lead Evan Menis, although Australian-born, still holds a deep sense of pride in the Greek heritage he was born into.
