Latin American Community Of Australia (Qld) Inc.

LACA aims to support the Latin American community in QLD in dealings with the federal, state and local governments, as well as other organisations and institutions. We want to present a unified Latin American viewpoint and express the concerns on current social issues relevant to Australia’s multicultural society. LACA QLD is committed to supporting Latin American community through programs that emphasise health and wellbeing and social inclusion. Our projects aim to engage with people to increase social connectedness using local community resources. Social connectedness within local community and across communities is an important protective factor for individuals to improve their resilience and coping skills and to acknowledge cultural strengths that promote health and wellbeing, tolerance and respect in a multicultural environment.

As an organisation we can show the importance of having a strong cohesive community which includes support for older people in our community. As Latin Americans we have a love of ‘having a good time’ with family, friends and celebrating with sports, dance and music- there is a strong social need which is being met by the social sports/cultural groups in our community. But there are also serious needs which need to be addressed and these include support for newly arrived immigrants, overseas students who may find themselves in difficulties and for our elders who may find themselves isolated and marginalised due to language barriers. One of our long term aims as an organisation is to set up an age care facility that will cater for the specific needs of our Spanish speaking elders. And as people, who come from a collective cultural background, we share that sense of responsibility of looking after one another and to exercise this cultural strength to the fullest, we need to work together