New president of the Cypriot Community in Melbourne and Victoria (CCMV), Harry Tsindos, said his focus as leader will be on making the community group relevant for the future.

We want to know what the youth want to see happening, from their perspective, rather than me try to decide what to do to attract the youth…we’re open to suggestions.

“We want to make our community more relevant to the Australian born Cypriots today and of course still maintain our responsibilities and duties to the Cypriot born members,” he told Neos Kosmos.

The 47 year old University of Melbourne graduate, who has a bachelor of commerce majoring in Accounting, Economics and Commercial law, has previously worked in accounting and international commodity trading, the latter being the industry he still works in today.

Mr Tsindos, who said he is 99.9 percent sure he is the first Australia born Cypriot to be president of the CCMV, said he thinks this marks a good opportunity and shows a sense of change amongst the community.

“The role is very challenging, with a great sense of responsibility; it’s all volunteer work,” he said.

Mr Tsindos said one of his main focuses would be relocating or redeveloping the premises of the community clubrooms, which are currently in Melbourne’s Lygon Street.

“We strongly believe that we need to move into better premises…we are at this stage looking at relocation to have much more amenities for the current members and new members and we hope will be adjacent to a sporting complex,” he said, adding that the CCMV is currently in discussions with Cypriot based soccer club the Bentleigh Greens.

“We’d like to have more cooperation with them and to listen to the youth from there,” he said.

Attracting second and third generation Cypriots would be an ongoing challenge according to Mr Tsindos.

“The practical way is to try to maintain a dialogue with some of the youth organisations around, like NEPOMAK, a Cypriot based organisation of youth, and our dancing groups,” he said.

The CCMV will appeal to the younger generation by sending out a letter asking members and friends to nominate young people, preferably under the age of 30, who would be interested in joining the CCMV’s executive committee, as a way to really get the youth involved, Mr Tsindos said.

“We want to know what the youth want to see happening, from their perspective, rather than me try to decide what to do to attract the youth…we’re open to suggestions,” he said.

Mr Tsindos said the community groups aim to turn their events, like the Cyprus Food and Wine event, into calendar events for Melbourne, and not just aimed at Cypriots.

“We want to become a mainstream community based organisation in Melbourne,” Mr Tsindos said, adding that the food and wine event has received a fantastic response from Melbourne in the past.

As president Mr Tsindos said he is also looking to establish an advisory board of esteemed persons of Cypriot background to reexamine their constitution and modify it for the future, adding that they had an overwhelming support for the new committee at the AGM.