A Multicultural Services Hub 
Multicultural Communities Council of Illawarra Ltd (MCCI) has prepared a Business Case to establish a Multicultural Services Hub to improve local services and support migrant communities in the Shoalhaven. In order to expand the background knowledge for the business case, arki_lab has been engaged to facilitate and implement a community engagement process with the Shoalhaven’s migrant communities and service-system stakeholders. Our iterative engagement process is based on different methods and tools to develop and document strong knowledge about existing gaps in service delivery for migrant communities and qualities, dreams and potentials for the future multicultural community in Shoalhaven.

Engagement anchored in local experiences
The service providers and community members have been able to participate in different steps of the process. In-depth interviews with migrant community members gave the basis to design the arki_nopoly game, understanding the overall conflicts and the existing informal networks and local services. At the arki_nopoly workshop we invited both migrant community members and service providers. In this way we created a space where the participants not only were able to listen to and understand the different challenges and opportunities, directly, but also to foster collaborations between the migrant community members and service providers. The engagement workshop gave us deeper insights into the issues facing local migrant community members in the Shoalhaven and understanding the existing gaps in services. The outlined findings of the engagement process are compiled in a presentation report and delivered to the Multicultural Communities Council of Illawarra (MCCI).