Celebrating Cultural Diversity at Our School
Cultural Diversity Week, observed March17-23 this year, is an annual event that celebrates our rich multicultural heritage. To mark this occasion, our school hosted Cultural Diversity Day on March 20, 2025, offering students and staff an opportunity to engage in a variety of activities that celebrated our diverse backgrounds. The event featured face and hand painting, mandala colouring, and live music at the student entry, creating a vibrant and welcoming atmosphere. A central feature of the day was the Diversity Tree, where students reflected on their cultural heritage by writing what they love about their culture on symbolic leaves. These contributions were then displayed at the school entrance, serving as a powerful visual representation of the many cultures that make up our school community. Through these activities, students and staff were encouraged to explore different traditions, share their experiences, and appreciate the unique cultural identities that enrich our learning environment.
Cultural Diversity in Victoria
Victoria is one of the most multicultural regions in the world, home to people from a wide range of cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Some key facts about cultural diversity in our state include:
- 290 languages are spoken, and people from 314 different ancestries live in Victoria.
- Over the past 70 years, more than 7.5 million migrants have made Australia their home.
- Nearly half of Australians were either born overseas or have a parent who was.
- In addition to English, the most commonly spoken languages in Australia include Mandarin, Arabic, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Italian, Greek, Tagalog/Filipino, Hindi, Spanish, and Punjabi.
At our school, we recognise that cultural diversity strengthens our community by fostering greater understanding, respect, and collaboration. Events like Cultural Diversity Day provide an opportunity to reflect on the importance of inclusion and to celebrate the traditions, languages, and stories that shape our shared experiences. This also aligns with the message of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (IDERD), which serves as a reminder of the ongoing need to challenge discrimination, promote equality, and foster a society where all individuals are treated with dignity and respect.
- AHS Wellbeing Team
Thursday 21 March marks the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (IDERD). This is sometimes known as ‘Harmony Day’ in Australia, but the use of ‘harmony’ as a focus on this day can gloss over racism, stop people from discussing it or cause people to think that speaking up upsets the idea of a ‘harmonious’ Australian society.
On the International Day of the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (IDERD) this year, Auburn High School is committed to:
- Learning more about racism and anti-racism
- Acknowledging and calling out racism
- Centring the voices of people who are negatively impacted by racism
We are doing this by:
- Celebrating Auburn High School’s cultural diverse community for Cultural Diversity Week 17th- 23rd March
- Collecting feedback on a new addition to our Bullying Prevention Policy that specifically defines identity-based bullying and highlights how the repetitive and systemic nature of this bullying results in cumulative harm
You can use the Australian Human Rights Commission’s IDERD resources to learn about the history and true meaning of IDERD. These resources include a fact sheet and a lesson plan for schools, which you can share with students, teachers and your community to learn about the history and true meaning of IDERD. They also include a general IDERD fact sheet to share with your colleagues.
It is important that we come together on this day to challenge racism. It will take a combined, collective effort to effect meaningful change across Australia.