Cultural Diversity Week is an opportunity for Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH) patients, families and staff to come together to share aspects of their culture, faith and language, and celebrate the benefits multiculturalism brings to our hospital and our country.

This week the RCH will be running a number of activities to celebrate this important event. If you’re coming in to the hospital for an appointment or your an inpatient, here are some activities we’d love you to join:

Monday 17 – Friday 21 March: Portrait of a Hospital

A collaborative project between the Footscray Community Arts Centre (FCAC) and the ARCH arts program at the RCH.

Two artists from FCAC will run creative portraiture workshops for patients and siblings, who will have the opportunity to produce their own self portrait with the assistance of professional artists!

The project aims to celebrate the diversity of all our patients, uniting children and young people through creativity, encouraging respect and understanding. The sessions will run in Specalist Clinics between 10am-12pm and 1-3pm.

Monday 17 – Monday 31 March: RCH World Map

A large world map will appear on the windows near the green lifts on the ground floor. Patients, families and staff are invited to place a sticker onto their country of origin at any time throughout the day until the end of March.

Tuesday 18 – Thursday 20 March: Main Street Activities

The RCH Education Institute will be hosting some great activities in Main Street from 11am-1pm, these include:

• Wish Tree: What do you wish for yourself, for your loved ones, for the world? RCH patients, families and staff are invited to write a wish for the world on a tag and place it on the Wish Tree – designed and created by RCH patients.
• Kids’ Messages of Hope: Children and young people will be photographed with their own messages of hope for their family or the world. Photographs will be collated for an interactive slide show with accompanying music that can be viewed on Harmony Day on Main Street (Friday 21 March).
• Mosaic art and monograph art activity: Children and young people will create mosaics and monograph drawings that reflect their own identity and family heritage using coloured paper, tiles and ink.

Thursday 20 March: MOU Launch

Signing of the memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the RCH and AMES in Main Street at 12.30pm.

This historic MOU, almost 12 months in the planning, will help promote cultural awareness at the RCH and support delivery of cross cultural support to patients and families from diverse backgrounds. An RCH work placement program for recently arrived refugees, and an initiative to bring volunteers from new migrant communities into our volunteer workforce, have already begun under this partnership.

AMES is Australia’s biggest provider of humanitarian settlement, education, training and employment services for refugees and newly arrived migrants, and has been operating in Victoria for 60 years.

Friday 21 March: Harmony Day

Throughout the week children and young people will be photographed with their own messages of hope for their family or the world. Photographs will be collated for an interactive slide show called Kids’ Messages of Hope that can be viewed in Main Street on Harmony Day.