By CASEY NEILL
NEIGHBOURHOOD Watch and police are reaching out to multicultural communities to make Greater Dandenong safer.
They launched Project Enable in the Dandenong Civic Square last Friday morning, to target Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) communities.
“The Dandenong community will identify their priorities and with our support and encouragement they will learn how to resolve the issues for themselves,” Neighbourhood Watch CEO Gill Metz said.
“Each group will use the programs that best suit them and their issues.”
Southern Metropolitan Region Assistant Commissioner Luke Cornelius said he had 2000 police officers to help him look after the region.
“When you do the maths … the ratio of police to population is actually quite small,” he said.
“Unless we have the community working with us to make the community stronger and safer, there’s no way that police could do this work.”
Mr Cornelius said he’d attended a Lions meeting the previous night, and all members were aged over 60 years with an Anglo-Saxon background.
“They were working very hard for the betterment of a community that is incredibly diverse,” he said.
“While I can have lunch on a different continent every day of the week in Dandenong, I didn’t see any Afghanis. I didn’t see any Africans. I didn’t see any people from Africa.
“I only saw one culture around the table last night.
“If you want to serve the community, you need to reflect the community that you serve.
“We are very keen to have drawn into Neighbourhood Watch, through Project Enable, people from all nations coming together to make our community strong.”
Mr Cornelius said Neighbourhood Watch had received funding to bring on a case worker and develop the project.
“A lot of recently-arrived community members aren’t well connected in the community,” he said.
“They’re locked up in their homes while their husbands are at work and they’re quite frightened.
“They have some concerns about their personal safety.
“An opportunity for them to get involved in something like Neighbourhood Watch gives them information, gives them practical advice about how they might be safer.
“It also gives them the opportunity to reach out into the community and make a difference themselves.”
He said the case worker would visit community groups, invite them to be involved and ask what help they need.
“They come from countries where, to be honest, they’ve been oppressed by their police forces rather than helped by them, so there’s a big issue around trust,” he said.
“Neighbourhood Watch has the potential to provide a great bridge between those communities and police and to help draw those communities out into helping to make the whole community feel safer.
Naila Beg has been working with Greater Dandenong Neighbourhood Watch and encouraged people to get involved.
“It makes us feel safer in the community. We also feel safer in our homes,” she said.
