Gunnedah Shire Council is striving to actively welcome new residents to the area by forming a new multicultural group and holding a Welcome to Gunnedah event.
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Multicultural Gunnedah is aimed at supporting new migrants in the shire, with plans to promote its purpose at upcoming event.
Eddie Whitham from Multicultural Tamworth will be invited as guest speaker after sharing the city's success at Gunnedah's Sister City Working Group's recent meeting.
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Councillors Owen Hasler and Jamie Chaffey are part of the sister city group and vocalised their support for the promotional event.
[The] sister city working group [is] a newly established working group that is really tasked with tackling some of the big issues in our community," Cr Chaffey said at the meeting.
"Multicultural Gunnedah, I think, will potentially be the answer to some of the problems we have with people from other nations coming into our community but not staying.
"I know from regular conversations with the mayor of Tamworth, it has been a huge part of their success in filling job vacancies ... in their community."
Cr Chaffey said Multicultural Tamworth also helped migrants with housing, language difficulties and schooling, and now 30-35 citizens were naturalised each month compared to about 15 citizens a year in the Gunnedah shire.
"Multicultural Gunnedah could follow a similar path to Multicultural Tamworth as a voluntary organisation helping people who are new to Australia feel at home," he said.
The council will also welcome new residents by hosting a bi-annual Welcome to Gunnedah event to help them connect with fellow newcomers, existing residents, services and community groups.
Cr Swain said it was "hard to keep track of the number of new people moving into the community" and the event would help to "gather them together and let them know how welcome they are in Gunnedah".
The initiative was commended by Cr Luke who said it could be difficult to engage with a new community and the event could help to highlight "all the benefits of our town" for newcomers.
Cr Chaffey said he intended to go along to the event to meet new residents.
"I see it as a great opportunity for councillors to engage with these new residents to our community and let them know the vibrancy and support that is available here within council and the entire community," he said.