Aimed at three outcomes of Whanaungatanga — sense of belonging, Tūrangawaewae — a place for all to stand, and Whai wahitanga — participation; and in works for years, the final draft of the Christchurch Multicultural Strategy – Our Future Together, is all set to be adopted by the Christchurch City Council on February 9.

Informing that was City Councillor Jimmy Chen, who also headed the City Council's Multicultural Working Party, which co-created the draft strategy in consultation with community representatives last year. While public consultations on the draft took place from June, it was also endorsed by Te Hononga Papatipu Runanga committee late last year.

"Our target is to launch the strategy in April. This means that soon everybody will be able to access Council information and services and participate in decision making regardless of their ethnicity, culture and English language skills. Moreover, with one-fifth of the City's population born overseas, it's important that everyone living here feel respected, safe and able to express their own cultural identity and linguistic and religious traditions. Once adopted, we will come up with a five-year implementation plan for the Multicultural Strategy, majority of which we intend to complete in this term of the Council," noted Chen.