On May 29, the organisation celebrated the official opening of its new office in Butler St followed by celebrating Samoan Language Week (May 31-June 6) and holding a fundraiser last Friday to send money to The Solomon Islands in the wake of Cyclone Maila.
Multicultural Aoraki events co-ordinator Maturo Siaosi said while it had been a busy time, it had been great to get out in the community and work with a number of other groups in the region.
"It’s really good for an organisation like us to collaborate with other agencies . . . and come together so we can run all this for our community, and our people to enjoy and to connect with each other.
"It makes me happy when I do something and it helps make someone happy or a community happy. It makes me feel like I am achieving something with my job."
He said the Samoan Language Week celebration held at Timaru Christian School last week had been especially successful.
"We had about seven or eight schools come along and perform, and then this year we also had some high schools join us.
"It was a really good day and Highfield School has already said they are happy to host it next year."
He said they had collaborated with Pasifika O Aoraki for the Cyclone Maila fundraiser.
"The Solomon Islands got hit by Cyclone Maila a few months back and we have a lady from there in our coffee group. She reached out to Pasifika O Aoraki to see if they could help fundraise and then they reached out to us and asked if we were interested in supporting them for a fundraiser.
"We decided to sell chop suey (sapasui) lunchboxes for $10 each. Most of the other agencies around ordered some and we had sold more than 50 of them.
"All the money will be going to The Solomon Islands and hopefully it will help some families. A big thank you to everyone in the community who supported by buying a lunchbox."
Pasifika O Aoraki general manager Aliana Siaosi said it had been important to work together to raise community awareness and make sure that people were feeling supported.
"With something like Samoan Language Week, it’s really prominent because we have a lot of Samoans here [in South Canterbury]. It’s our biggest demographic followed by Tongans.
"One thing that’s really awesome about celebrating language weeks and being able to do a fundraiser like that is that we recognise that the diversity of this community is because of those that come here and bring their languages, culture, belief systems and values."
Multicultural Aoraki general manager Nils Macfarlane said the organisation had also been holding a fortnightly Conversational Cafe Club as way to give people learning English a safe space to practice.
"It gives those learning an environment where they can talk slowly and clearly.
"They find a lot of time when they go somewhere like the supermarket it can be quite hard, especially with our New Zealand accent.
"The aim is just to provide a different place where you can hear a lot of different accents and have a nice conversation where you can just keep asking ‘what’s this mean?’ or ‘what’s that mean?’"
Anyone was welcome to attend the sessions which are held at the Butler St office on the first and third Tuesday of the month from 12.30pm-1.30pm.
