Multicultural Tauranga is calling the community to celebrate and spread cultural appreciation on Friday, August 26, for a Bay of Plenty Multicultural Day.

No matter where you are next Friday, Multicultural Tauranga encourages people to dress in cultural attire, share a meal together and tell stories from their culture.

'The reason we're doing this is because we're finding that 11 per cent of our population in the Bay of Plenty now are Asian and Pacific and we also have 18 per cent of Maori descent,” says Multicultural Tauranga's president Premila D'Mello.

'We have events like this to build awareness of ethnic communities who are a part of the Bay of Plenty community, and having a multicultural day would mean they feel their culture is accepted and valued.”

Schools celebrate

Premila has reached out to local schools to get involved in the day, with five confirming their participation.

Multicultural Tauranga has also held an art competition in schools, with prizes being awarded at a small gathering at the Creative Community Campus in the Historic Village on Multicultural

Day, August 26, at 6pm. 'The theme of this year's art competition was ‘The Fingers of one hand –Nga Matimati no te ringa kotahi'. Our creative officer Alessandra Tilby has done a wonderful job of running the competition,” says Premila.

Multicultural Tauranga hopes the day will encourage the community to appreciate Bay of Plenty's diversity. Photo: John Borren.

Awareness and appreciation

Multicultural Tauranga is also a part of the New Zealand National Plan Against Racism, and Premila says this is something local migrant students have raised as something needing change.

'By understanding different cultures it becomes easier to see people as human beings,” says Premila.

'Japanese, Korean, even some Indian Sikh people, they have special customs and traditions and the way they dress can be misunderstood.

'We feel that almost everyone in New Zealand is an immigrant because our forefathers have moved from another country to this beautiful land, so we wish to celebrate our diversity while keeping in mind our tangata whenua.”

Premila says Multicultural Tauranga encourages the community to not only accept different cultures, but to appreciate and find enjoyment in them too.

'It would be good for us to make this effort to increase the understanding of cultures so that local communities appreciate and become informed about diversity.”

Multicultural Tauranga invites people to share pictures of how they celebrate on the day on social media with #MulticulturalDay 2022 on Facebook and to send pictures to: manager@trmc.co.nz