Blacktown City Mayor Tony Bleasdale OAM has congratulated Blacktown City Libraries on receiving a prestigious award from the NSW Public Libraries Association.
Blacktown City Libraries was awarded the Multicultural Excellence Award for their Language Ambassadors Project, which aimed to promote the library's collection, events and services to culturally and linguistically diverse local communities.
"Blacktown City is an incredibly diverse city, with residents from more than 180 countries who speak more than 180 different languages," Mayor Bleasdale said.
"The library project was a marvellous way to ensure everyone in our community, regardless of language, was able to connect with their local library, thanks to the support of our cultural community leaders.
"This project was especially important during the past two years of COVID-19 lockdowns, when Council was forced to close its libraries and shift online.
"Well done to everyone involved in this fantastic initiative."
The project involved a series of videos featuring influential leaders from Blacktown City's multicultural communities to help promote the library resources in language.
The videos were then promoted across Blacktown City Libraries' social media pages to engage with the multicultural community during lockdowns in 2020 and 2021.
Manager Library Services, Laurence McDonnell, proudly presented the trophy to Multicultural Services Librarian Joelmon Zungar following an online awards ceremony.
Mr Zungar said, "Our language ambassadors are leaders who showed their community how to find support on how to cope with living in a new place when English is not their first language.
"It can be daunting for people, so their testimonials about how our libraries meet the needs of Blacktown City's diverse community is invaluable."
Four videos, in Chinese, Punjabi, Urdu and Serbian have been completed, with future videos to come in Hindi, Filipino, Tamil, Italian and Sudanese.
Blacktown City Libraries has resources available in more than 30 different languages. English Conversation Classes are held across the year and library members have access to improve their English through various online resources.
Watch the videos here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0qOdFgwd8wd77fMRJW71Z--qKP5ILyqN
Picture: Manager Library Services, Laurence McDonnell, presents the NSW Public Libraries Association Multicultural Excellence Award to Multicultural Services Librarian Joelmon Zungar.
