Aussie Rules kicks serious goals

One of the most Australian of all national organisations has won the top prize for 2006 for multicultural marketing.

The Aussie Rules governing body, the AFL, has won the grand award in the National Multicultural Marketing Awards announced at a gala dinner in Sydney tonight hosted by the Premier and Minister for Citizenship, Morris Iemma.

The awards have been handed out for 17 years by the NSW Community Relations Commission as a way of highlighting innovation in dealing with cultural diversity in the private and public sectors

The AFL claimed spectacular results from a programme to boost multicultural participation in the game and through that to play a key role in integrating newly arrived immigrants and refugees into the Australian way of life.

Congratulating the winners, the Chair of the Commission, Stepan Kerkyasharian, said “This is a very timely project in a year when there has been so much clamour about Aussie values, Aussie culture and integration as prerequisites for citizenship. And they have done it so well, as if they were carefully following a handbook on multicultural marketing.

“The goals of the project were particularly encouraging: to introduce Australian Football as part of settlement and integration, implement community capacity building in culturally and linguistically diverse communities and influence community leagues and clubs to embrace multicultural diversity.

“In one way Aussie Rules has an advantage in that it is a uniquely Australian game which new migrants or refugees would never have heard of before their arrival. It represents something completely different that new-comers ought to learn about.

“Australian Football has a great tradition of incorporating Aussies of European background. Now its time for young men and women of Middle Eastern, African and Asian background to be drawn into the Aussie Game,” he said.

According to the AFL Awards entry, an estimated 16 thousand people have this year attended an AFL game for the first time in their lives. They came from a very broad range of organisations including the Eritrean Community in Australia, the East Africa Relief Association, the Council of Sudanese Groups, the North Cyprus Turkish Citizens group, primary schools, secondary schools, tertiary institutions and language schools.

The project operated on a grand scale – involving 42 schools with a high percentage of immigrant or refugee children, exposing five thousand three hundred students to Australian football through a course of six lessons each and including thirty-two visits by high profile AFL players to schools.

The multicultural team at the AFL includes Greek, Chinese, Vietnamese, Croatian, Ukrainian, Spanish and Lebanese. The league says that using the skills of their staff
had a profound effect on the strategies and the direction of the Multicultural Programme and Marketing Strategies. .. more

Forty-two schools participated in the multicultural schools programme. Some 5300 students were registered and 450 students participated in the AFL Multicultural Cup.

Former Hawthorn star, Angelo Lekkas, has personally won over many fans including students at a Muslim girl’s school in Melbourne

They claimed that no other sporting code has a dedicated multicultural team whose key objective is to cater for migrant and refugee communities. “Resources and staff at our disposal are unique and tailored to meet the challenges for our sport within multicultural Australia.”

Five multicultural development officers and one multicultural project coordinator are creating and implementing strategies that reach people from diverse backgrounds, developed by people of NESB themselves.

The League’s Chief Executive Officer, Andrew Demetriou, signed a Community Accord relating to embracing all within the community thereby signalling the high regard in which Multicultural Australia is held within the AFL.

Stepan Kerkyasharian says: “I am particularly pleased to hear that coaches have already recognised the potential of tall athletic young men from Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa as future ruckmen in the game and that the project has interacted with teenagers from Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti and Eritrea. I am told the Western Bulldogs Club hosted an event for 500 people to promote the project.

“The AFL did not just pay lip service to attracting a broader audience. They set up a sophisticated project team and followed carefully the now well-defined rules of multicultural marketing,” Mr Kerkyasharian said.

Whilst the AFL was named winner of the Cisco System’s Commercial Big Business Award, the other Category Winners were as follows:

Advertising Award
Multicultural Health Communication Service for the Multicultural Breast Awareness Campaign

Office of Fair Trading’s Commercial Small Business Award
Global Language Books for the English-Dinka Dictionary

Government Award
Sydney South West Area Health Service for the Arabic-speaking men’s anti-smoking campaign

Technology Award
Office of Multicultural Interests and the ECC of West Australia for the Multicultural Gateway

The Integral Energy Community Award
The Gould Group for the Multicultural Gardens Project

Austrade Export Award (Encouragement Award)
Ukilu for exporting Asian pharmaceuticals to Asia Make Believe Pty Ltd for a plan to revive Aussie wrestling and take it to China