Today’s children will become adults of a truly culturally-diverse world. Already, schools are witnessing challenges that can lead to exclusion and depression for new students arriving from overseas. Kids aren’t mean, they often just don’t know how to engage in their changing world. School students desperately need to grow in their understanding of intercultural issues; not only to be good friends and have social wellbeing at school, but to become adults who can flourish in culturally-diverse workplaces and communities. This is true for all kids, no matter their background.

In this project we are creating an experiential education program to help schools grow strong intercultural understanding in their students. These capabilities are a requirement of the Australian curriculum, but there is currently no program that covers them comprehensively. Interserve’s CultureConnect team brings 165 years of cross-cultural experience, as well as a track-record in equipping church leaders and school chaplains to engage effectively in intercultural communities. In partnership with expert educators and curriculum developers, we are working to create a readily accessible program that can be run in a variety of contexts – beginning with mid-primary and adapting as needed to older or younger children or adults. It will be ideally suited to delivery by chaplains, giving students natural access to further help in addressing the issues and questions they personally face.

Once it is established, every school that runs this program will not only help their students to thrive, they will also be helping the most marginalised migrants in Australia through CultureConnect’s broader work.

We are aiming to raise $100,000 to get this program off the ground, through grant funding, sponsorship and appeals. We invite the Tangible Love community to help us raise $15,000 towards our goal. This will cover the full cost of initial curriculum development and go a long way to achieving the vision of a culturally literate and compassionate Australia.

This project is tax-deductible.