A public meeting was convened by the Greek Orthodox Community of Melbourne and Victoria (GOCMV) to discuss the changing needs of the Greek Australian community and maintaining the future of its organisations.

“The aim of the meeting was to engage with the general community with all the other community groups, to sit down and work collaboratively to determine what is needed by the community,” president of the GOCMV, Mr Bill Papastergiadis, told Neos Kosmos.

“We want to ensure that all the organisations are appropriately recognised, that they’re relevant in terms of what needs to be done and that their voices are heard. We want to develop a common strategy on how it will be realised.”

Many of the smaller community groups had expressed difficulties in finding young people to take over the reins of their organisations, resulting in the selling of community group assets.

This highlighted a great need for a meeting of this kind, in order to encourage discussion with the general community about how to attract the current and future generations of the Greek Australian community to continue the hard work of these groups.

“We’ve seen a generational change, a lack of interest largely in most of those organisations by the second and third generations,” said Mr Papastergiadis.

“The community can’t continue to spit out the same old events like a xoro or something like that and think we’re going to be winning over the hearts and minds of the second and third generations.”

Over 110 people gathered at the newly opened Centre for Contemporary Greek Culture on its original site of Lonsdale Street, with close to 40 Greek community groups from across Victoria represented.

Officially presenting on the night were Mr Bill Papastergiadis, Dr Marinis Pirpiris and Mr Stelios Koukouvitakis.

The GOCMV presented two initiatives to be funded collectively by the community, both looking to education as the way forward.

One idea was the funding of a chair of Greek language at one of the universities to fund research projects for university students, in addition to the increase of scholarships currently available for the three Greek grammar schools in Victoria.

Additional investment opportunities in the CBD were also suggested, in order to maintain the Greek presence, with examples including a Greek bookstore and a kafenio for the elderly.

Following the presentation, the dialogue was opened up to the rest of the attending community members with 20 to 25 different community leaders expressing their ideas and concerns.

A surprise proposal put forward by Mr Paul Mavroudis, president of the Thessaloniki Association, was that small community groups change their constitution so that if the groups fold, the assets are passed on to an organisation that continues to represent the Greek community, such as Fronditha Care, the Australian Greek Welfare Society, or to bigger community groups such as the GOCMV.

Almost 20 years since the Greek community had a meeting of this kind, Mr Papastergiadis was very enthusiastic with the turn out, saying “not only was I happy with the turnout but more importantly, I was very impressed by the collegiate and supportive atmosphere of all those who attended and their readiness to work collaboratively”.

Following the meeting, the concerns expressed on the night will be collated, picking out three main ideas, after which, a follow-up meeting, expected to take place early next year, will be held to discuss the funding of the future projects.

To conclude, those attending on the night were given a tour of the new building and took in the beautiful city views from the top floor.