President’s Welcome
SIETAR Australasia is finally up and running. It has been a long journey with one step forward, three back, then another step forward… then another back, then a wobble… then another step forward. Yet, here we are, finally on our way! We have our website and newsletter – both are fairly rudimentary at this stage – but it is a start. We welcome any contributions, thoughts, suggestions, ideas from all of you on how we can improve.
In setting up SIETAR Australasia, I had two goals in mind: one short term and the other longer term. Our immediate goal is to organise a conference to highlight intercultural activity in Australasia. This conference aims to explore multiculturalism, multi-cultural, and multi-involvement in the Australasia region. The concept of multiculturalism – is so necessary in our world right now where the crux of so much misunderstanding arises from lack of deeper appreciation of other cultures and how they are different. Without this understanding, strange cultures may seem threatening. Understanding another’s culture has the potential to break down barriers and reveal our commonality, albeit wrapped in different colours, different labels, and different names.
We are holding our inaugural conference in Cairns, Queensland, on 16-18 October 2015, to entice all our overseas participants to escape the Northern Hemisphere’s winter and enjoy sun, surf and sand in the Southern Hemisphere.
Our long term goal for SIETAR Australasia is to offer courses in intercultural studies from primary school right up to university level. Intercultural studies can set the groundwork to break down the existing societal mutual misunderstandings that exist within Australiasia. These courses, we hope, will chip away at the dominance of a monoculture over the multitudes of cultures below it to enable all cultures to intermingle, interact and blend into one another in a truly multicultural sense of the word. There is a niche for intercultural courses in Australasia as there is a need to work at achieving multiculturalism in Australia. And there is much that Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, and the islands of Australasia can learn from and teach each other. We are working out the practical details of how to advance this goal right now.
Again, a welcome from all of us at SIETAR Australasia, and thank you for your support.