With less than three weeks to go before Speak Greek month kicks off, the project’s launch date has been set for Saturday 21 February.

Planned to coincide with the United Nations’ Mother Language Day, the launch event will take place at the Greek Cultural Centre in Melbourne.

Mike Zafiropoulous AM, the founder of Speak Greek in March, told Neos Kosmos that the campaign had already attracted the interest of other Greek diaspora communities.

“The campaign has spread to other parts of the world such as Italy and the UK and they have expressed interest to adopt the campaign in 2016.”

Pulling together a wide range of educational projects in Victoria under the Speak Greek in March banner, the primary focus of the initiative is to encourage the daily use of Greek by families in the home and by businesses.

Mr Zafiropoulous said that choosing such a date for the launch was highly appropriate.

“Greek Australians have played an important role in establishing multiculturalism as the most appropriate policy for integrating Australia’s diverse communities into a socially cohesive nation,” he said.

“Australia as a multicultural society has an obligation to support and celebrate our nation’s most valuable asset of multilingualism and the Greek Australian community has been at the forefront of advocating for the retention and maintenance of the community languages we have brought to our adopted land.”

The UN’s International Mother Language Day – observed annually since 2000 to promote linguistic and cultural diversity, was originally given the Feb 21 anniversary date to mark the day in 1952 when demonstrators in Bangladesh campaigning for recognition of their Bengali language, as one of the two national languages of the then Pakistan, were killed by police in Dhaka.

For further information on Speak Greek in March and how you can get involved, email info@speakgreekinmarch.com