AFL goes multicultural

20.05.09

CRC Chair, Stepan Kerkyasharian and the Minister for Citizenship, Virginia Judge, with the 2009 National Multicultural Marketing Trophy.  

After several years working successfully to capture new players and new fans from migrant communities, the AFL will now make a new commitment to multicultural Australia by becoming a major sponsor of the National Multicultural Marketing Awards.

The decision was announced today by Stepan Kerkyasharian, the Chair of the Community Relations Commission which has been organising the awards for the last twenty years.

"In 2006, the AFL surprised a lot of people when it took off the grand award at the National Multicultural Marketing Awards for 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."

"I congratulate the AFL on taking this important step because Aussie Rules is a uniquely Australian game.  For migrants and refugees it represents something completely different that their new homeland has to offer to them."

"We all know that the game has a strong tradition of attracting great players from European migrant communities. It is only fitting that the AFL is now in search of new stars from Middle Eastern, African and Asian backgrounds."

I believe that association with the National Multicultural Marketing Awards will greatly lift the AFL's profile amongst ethnic communities and boost their recruitment goals", he said.

Meanwhile the Minister for Citizenship, Virginia Judge, today launched the National Multicultural Marketing Awards for 2009.

The awards seek out best multicultural marketing project each year across seven categories - Advertising, Big Business, Small Business, Community, Export, Government and Technology.

The Grand winner of the 2009 National Multicultural marketing Awards will be chosen from the seven category winners.

"Over the last 20 years, these Awards have played a significant role in bringing Australians to the realisation that cultural diversity is a major economic and social asset", according to Stepan Kerkyasharian.

"We have seen magnificent export deals that would never have happened if the business people concerned did not know about the market in their former  homeland and were able to communicate and negotiate with target businesses in that country."

"We have seen very creative multilingual website developments that that won international contracts for Australian companies against very stiff competition because of the linguistic and cultural skills of the Australian workers."

"The National Multicultural Marketing Awards have demonstrated over and over again that cultural diversity is a very valuable commercial asset that makes Australia richer and more successful. I am confident we will discover many new clever examples in the 2009 Awards contest," he said.

As sponsors of the 2009 National Multicultural marketing Awards, the AFL will join:

• The Australian Newspaper (Executive Sponsor)
• Casella Wines
• CMC Markets (Government Award Sponsor)
• Commonwealth Bank (Commercial Small Business Award Sponsor)
• Qantas
• Westin Sydney Hotel