In an Australian-first, leading multicultural communications agency, Ethnolink, has launched Ethnolink Education, an online multicultural communications training platform for communications and community-sector professionals, made available entirely for free.
At launch, Ethnolink Education includes 14 hours of on-demand video training, on topics relevant to communicating with Australia’s Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) communities including writing for translation, website translation, community engagement, video translation, and multilingual government communications.
Having worked on multicultural communications campaigns with some of Australia’s leading agencies, including award-winning agency, Thinkerbell, Ethnolink hopes that the launch of their online training platform will be beneficial to both agencies, as well as to professionals working in government and community sectors.
READ MORE: New media diversity directory features Greek and Cypriot experts.
Founder and CEO of Ethnolink, Costa Vasili, who grew up in Australia’s most culturally diverse region, Dandenong, was inspired to launch Ethnolink Education after seeing first-hand the knowledge gap that mainstream communications professionals typically have when it comes to multicultural communications.
Commenting on the launch, Costa said: “Ethnolink Education is a passion project that I am incredibly proud of, fuelled by a burning desire I’ve had for over ten years to improve the quality of multicultural communications across Australia.”
After noticing that no one in Australia was regularly producing educational content on multicultural communications, Ethnolink’s management team decided to invest in the development of the Ethnolink Education online training platform.
“Over the past decade, I’ve noticed that communications professionals have great enthusiasm for diverse communications, but generally have a lack of understanding on how they need to tailor their communications across language and culture. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been a place for them to learn and develop — that’s why we created Ethnolink Education,” Costa said.
Regularly asked to consult with state and federal government departments on multicultural communications strategies, Costa has led the content development that underpins Ethnolink Education.
Continuing, Costa added: “After ten years in the industry, it became apparent that we could improve the quality of multicultural communications across Australia at a wider-scale by developing educational content and promoting it to the masses, rather than just working with clients on a one-to-one basis.”
The launch of Ethnolink Education supports rather than replaces Ethnolink’s professional services offering, which includes multilingual content development, translations, and multicultural marketing.
Training content available on the platform includes hand-picked recordings of Ethnolink’s most popular webinars, as well as lesson outlines and overviews.
Ethnolink plans to release additional lessons onto the platform on a monthly basis, and aims to promote the platform Australia-wide in the hope that it leads to improved outcomes for multicultural communities.
The launch of Ethnolink Education follows a string of recent announcements including Ethnolink being awarded a 2-year contract with HealthShare Victoria, as well as the doubling of Ethnolink’s team over the past two years, now standing at 40 professionals servicing clients Australia-wide.
