MEDIA RELEASE

10 MARCH 2009

New Home For City’s Multicultural Services Centre

A lack of space that threatened to split up Wellington’s one-stop-shop Multicultural Services Centre has been overcome by a move to a new location.

Refugees and migrants using the new centre in Webb Street are also benefiting from bigger, brighter and better ventilated classrooms and training spaces, and the new location is closer to council housing where a number of the centre’s clients live.

The new centre at 39 Webb Street is being officially opened on March 18.

Six agencies based at the Multicultural Services Centre (MSC) help Wellington’s refugees and migrants with a range of issues, including English language tuition, employment assistance, mental health services, interpreting and social development.

The member agencies are ChangeMakers, ESOL Home Tutors Wellington, Interpreting Wellington, MCLaSS, Refugees as Survivors and Refugee Services Aotearoa.

“Many refugees and migrants use the services of more than one of the agencies, so it is important for them to be based in one location,” MSC interim chair Derek Gill said.

“The centre had outgrown the building it was using in Taranaki Street, so we had to find a new location to ensure we could stay together and continue offering a convenient one-stop-shop service.”

Large windows in the new centre’s training rooms have provided an added bonus for refugees and migrants attending English language classes.

“The students can now see the weather, which is a favourite topic of conversation for Kiwis and something English language teachers train their students to be able to comment on,” Derek Gill said.

“You could hardly see any sky from the classrooms at the former centre. Now students learning English words for the weather can see it outside, and open the windows and feel it on their faces.”

ENDS

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