ASCON meets new Cumberland Mayor

By Richard J Ford -  PRO-APCO Inc
Sydney-Australia
February 21, 2018




The Mayor of Cumberland Council, Greg Cummings met with the Officers and members of the Auburn Small Community Organisation Network Inc (ASCON) on the 15^th of February 2018 to discuss various community concerns. Led by the current Chairperson Dr Cen Amores, the multicultural group presented ASCON’s many projects and activities for the benefit of the multicultural communities of Cumberland LGA.


Also present in this initial meeting were Council’s Acting General Manager, Hamish McNulty and Manager for Community Development, Brooke Endycott.

Among the successful projects initiated by ASCON that are participated in by CALD communities and refugees are: employment initiatives such as Connect to Work and My First Job, Refugee Camp I My Neighbourhood, Flavours of Auburn Cultural project ( Walking Food Tour, Training for Food Tour Guides, Cooking food from diverse cultures and publication of Cooking Food Book.

ASCON raised with the Mayor, a variety of issues that directly affect small and struggling communities in the delivery of their respective projects. These included: confusion about the new booking procedure for accessing Council’s facilities, their feeling of being left out and the difficulty of accessing one-on-one support from Council staff, their desire to bring back the one-day Flavours of Auburn’s sharing of culture in cooking authentic food and sharing them with multicultural communities, cultural performances and the valuable opportunity to actively participate with CALD communities working effectively as a team from project planning, execution, monitoring and evaluation stages to promote community harmony. In response, the Mayor assured ASCON that he will take up the issues raised to the Council for them to deliberate on and make decisions.