Nia Karteris, the Chairperson for the Greek Festival of Sydney for the past eight years, has seen the festival grow from a small event held in a suburban Sydney park to the shores of Darling Harbour.

The festival hasn’t just expanded in size and location it also reaches out to a broader audience, no longer aimed solely at Greek Australians, she says.

“Since 2002, it definitely has grown… when we took it to Bay Street [Brighton-le-Sands], from a little park, that changed the demographic of people that would come, that attracted more younger people and families,” she said.

Karteris said moving locations, from Brighton-le-Sands to Darling Harbour, placing the festival program in the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, targeting second and third generation Greek Australians as well as Australians interested in Greek culture or heritage proved to be a turning point for the festival.

“That’s where we are today; we’re attracting audiences from all over the world. There’s people that want to participate in the festival, that are not only from Sydney, from Australia wide, but also international and they attend the festival or take part in their own areas: visual arts, music, or theatre,” she says.

Raising funds is one of the biggest challenges for the festival, Karteris says.

“Everybody wants large music names but when you’re a community based organisation it’s virtually impossible. You need to find partners, you need a lot of money, so unfortunately things like that in our portfolio are not going to be happening in the near future,” she said. “It is hard now, we haven’t had any funding from the Greek government for years now, whereas they were very supportive financially in the 90s.”

However, Karteris says the festival is a great opportunity to encourage up and coming talent. “Why do we need to go and spend vast amounts of money on bringing people from overseas when we have talent in our local community?” she says. “This is what I’m proud about, establishing our local talent and giving them a go and allowing them to nourish their talents and what they believe in and have them grow.”

As well as organising the Greek festival, Ms Karteris is also involved in raising funds for cancer research. After her mother died from cancer, ten years ago, Ms Karteris said one of her dreams was to give back something to the Royal Prince Afred hospital’s cancer centre (now called Lifehouse at RPA: The Chris O’Brien cancer centre).

“The care that my mum was given and the dedication of the nurses and the doctors is just amazing, and unless you’ve experienced it with someone that has cancer and seen what they need to go through, you really don’t understand it. You can imagine it but unless you live it you can’t understand it,” she says.

The property manager at real estate agent Raine & Horne in Sydney’s Bardwell Park juggles these roles with also being the Vice President of the Greek Orthodox Community of NSW, a job which, as the only woman on the board, requires a thick skin.

“I’m the only woman, I’m the Vice President and I can tell you, as hard as it is so say, it is very, very male dominated. It’s very hard, you need to be strong, have a strong character and a strong stomach too; you’ve got to have the willpower to fight it and also be able to speak your mind,” she said.

Karteris was born in Greece and migrated to Australia with her mother in 1970, following her father who moved over earlier. She says growing up as a migrant in Australia forced her to deny her Greek heritage.

“I can say that growing up was the hardest thing to do as a Greek, being known as a “wog”, and that made me turn against my heritage and my Greek culture for a while there.”

It wasn’t until her second trip back to Greece that this changed. “It took me a second trip to Greece to identify who I was and to realise that I should be proud of being Greek and of my heritage and what we have given to society and all the hard work that the Greeks as a very established community have given to this multicultural society,” she said.

Karteris is adamant that despite Australia’s self perception as being a multicultural country, there is still a long way to go. “We’re still a very racist nation from my point of view, we’re not embracing multiculturalism but that is also a fault of all government because they don’t embrace it, it’s too difficult a situation for them to take measures to embrace it,” she says.

“I think that we failed as a nation to embrace multiculturalism. I think we still need to face those hurdles and it’s a shame because at fault is even ourselves, the second and third generation who tend to forget where we came from.”

Overcoming these hurdles requires education and integration, Ms Karteris says, suggesting that interaction between cultures should begin at primary school level and that cultural festivals need to continue to educate people and embrace multiculturalism.

“There’s festivals for every culture now, do some cross cultural stuff, learn about them, don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid to ask questions and don’t be afraid to help out. Some of these new communities that are coming are facing horrendous steps to get to where we are today; it’s only going to get harder for them, I think we had it a little bit easier than what they will have in the future.”