ALIA Multicultural celebrated the launch of their group with their Come to the table Webinar.

Joseph Lo Bianco AM, Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne, was a guest speaker.

ALIA President Vicki Edmuns shared that her presidential theme was diversity and that multiculturalism brings multicultural communities brings richness to our local libraries.

ALIA CEO Cathie Warburton shared that libraries play a role in supporting international students with multilingual resources.

Professor Joseph Lo Bianco emphasized the importance; that libraries have in promoting multiculturalism in their collections.

A few points from the chat:

• Translation apps and software provide a general idea of the language but make mistakes.
•  London has the most multicultural languages in Europe.
•  193 United Nations States are multicultural. 
• There are 7,097 languages spoken across the world. 
• There are 2,464 endangered languages. 70% extinct in Australia, Canada and the United States of America compared to 10% in Sub-Saharan Africa.
•  40% of the world has no access to education in languages.

Young people in Australia spend less time learning languages than in other countries. Compared to first languages taught in Denmark and South Korea at 6%, Spain at 4% and Poland at 1%.

Professor Lo Bianco raised his concerns about schools not spending more time teaching languages. 

You can catch up on the ALIA Multicultural conversation by following their #ALIAMulticultural hashtag and @MulticultuALIA Twitter account. Or follow ALIA Multicultural via

Website: ALIA Multicultural website

Social Media:

Instagram: ALIA Multicultural Instagram

Facebook: ALIA Multicultural Facebook

YouTube: Multicultural ALIA

Reference:

ALIA Multicultural. (2022, November 22) ALIA Multicultural: Come to the table [Video]. Vimeo. URL 

Chang, C., and Macleod, K. (2022). Map: How multicultural is your suburb?. SBS News.

#ALIAEventRecap #ALIAMulticultural