Cultural Diversity Week is coming to Victoria 

Victoria will celebrate Cultural Diversity Week from Monday 17 to Sunday 23 March 2025, offering early childhood education and care (ECEC) services an opportunity to acknowledge the diverse and vibrant multicultural communities in which they operate. 

The 2025 theme ‘Embrace the journey, shape our future’ lends itself well to ECEC, Bronwen FitzGerald Deputy Secretary Early Childhood Education said in a recent bulletin message. 

“In our sector, we have a unique role in creating learning environments built around inclusion and respect, in which children actively learn about and appreciate differences from an early age,” she said.

“The Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework outlines the fundamental role of early childhood education in fostering and promoting cultural awareness in children. We know that children achieve better outcomes when their diverse strengths, abilities, interests and cultural practices are understood and supported.”

Ms FitzGerald encouraged services to consider how they can showcase cultural diversity in their settings, such as setting up displays celebrating different cultures and traditions, and their contributions to the local community, or through providing opportunities for community members to actively participate in the service through activities like cooking demonstrations, craft-making sessions and storytelling circles.

Two new resources were shared by the Department in honour of the week, developed in partnership with fka Children’s Services, to support services to engage with multilingual families.

The Supporting CALD families to engage in kindergarten webpage also has a wealth of information to support services to communicate with CALD families about the benefits of kindergarten.

All kindergarten services are eligible to access free on-site, telephone and video interpreters to strengthen engagement with parents and carers who speak a language other than English or use Auslan.

The Information about kindergarten in your language webpage also includes resources translated into 30 languages to support families to build their understanding of kindergarten.

While embracing diversity and inclusion is vital to children’s learning and development, it is also important for the ECEC workforce, too, with Ms FitzGerald sharing information about the Early Childhood Tertiary Partnerships program which offers a range of tertiary courses with additional support for people from CALD backgrounds. Support includes:

• in-language supports to enrol and complete studies
• academic and workplace mentors who are culturally responsive.

Learn more about Cultural Diversity Week here.