A new program by the Wimmera Development Association looks to facilitate increased migration to the region through market research and understanding.
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The Migration Paths program aims to research which culturally diverse groups would fit in best with the regional living environment in the Wimmera and offer pathways for those groups to move to the region.
Funding for the program has been approved by the Victorian government, with work set to begin in 2022.
Wimmera Development Association executive director Chris Sounness said the program would take a different approach to earlier migration campaigns, looking to target individual groups with compatibility to the area.
"The focus is on trying to work out how we can best target groups of people that understand what moving to a rural community is about," he said.
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"There are probably more similarities between living in Melbourne and Mumbai than between Melbourne and the Wimmera.
"For a lot of people who have lived in an urban environment somewhere in the world, moving to a rural environment can be daunting.
"But if you have grown up in a rural part of the world somewhere else, moving to rural Victoria there are a lot of similarities.
"You have different expectations of services and amenities. That is one of the challenges we often face, people have certain expectations and we offer different expectations."
Mr Sounness said the program will be broken into three phases; market research, working with communities and working with local community and business leaders.
"The first part is doing some market research identifying which communities of people who have moved to Australia and are living in Melbourne or Adelaide but are open to the idea of moving to a rural environment.
"Once we have done that then we might work with those communities we have identified as best fits to work out what they are looking for, what skills and capabilities those people have, and how we can best encourage the move to happen.
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"The third part is working with our local community to make sure we have the community and business leadership in place so that when people move to our region there is an understanding in place that these people come from a different background and might need different support to people that have grown up in the region."
The program will be complementary to earlier migration strategies conducted on the region by the Wimmera Development Association.
Mr Sounness said the Karen community in Nhill has served as an inspiration for the project, with an aim to replicate the successful integration across other communities in the Wimmera.
"The Karen community in Nhill have been the inspiration for this project, but what we are trying to do is learn from why the Karen community has been so successful, build on it and increase the workforce and the number of families living in the Wimmera Southern Mallee," he said.
The Migrations Path program was provided with a $96,000 grant through the federal government's Building Better Regions Fund. Work will begin on the program in 2022.
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