In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic last year, youth worker Tyson Tuala was among those struggling to reach their communities and in need of support.
From New Zealand, Mr Tuala works for the Le Mana team at Melbourne's Centre for Multicultural Youth (CMY), supporting young people from Maori-Pasifika communities.
"We were trying to create small translations or short videos and flyers around the current restrictions at the time, while trying to work out how to pivot our cultural programs from face-to-face to an online forum," he told SBS News.
"That's where the roadblocks started. We knew what we needed to say, but we didn't have the understanding or the technical skills at that point to even feel confident to go ahead and give it a go."
Multicultural leaders and community organisations across the country have been at the forefront of disseminating public health information throughout the pandemic, and have long been calling for tailored messaging.
Youth worker Tyson Tuala from the Maori-Pasifika community space in Melbourne. Source: SBS News
Looking back, Mr Tuala says navigating these challenges with his community - one of the many diverse Pasifika communities - has been a trying process, especially with rapidly changing information. He says grants and funding support that have since been provided by governments has helped.
"But like every other community, at the start, it was very hard to keep on top of things. Having a decision made that would affect our communities that night, and having to provide that instant communication was very trying to say the least," he said.
Now, CMY is utilising a new social media playbook developed by researchers at Monash University to help culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) community organisations engage with young people.
It's part of new research, launching on Wednesday, which found opportunities to better communicate with CALD youth and associated community groups in future crises.
The project, funded by the Victorian government's Department of Families, Fairness and Housing (DFFH), saw researchers work with people aged 18 to 25 from six ethno-cultural backgrounds during the pandemic last year.
They also teamed up with community organisations working with young people in Victoria, including CMY.
"For almost everyone, COVID-19 put everyone on the back foot. And that was particularly true for community organisations and non-profit groups, who already work under resource strains and utilise voluntary labour just in their day-to-day work," research fellow Delvin Varghese said.
"When COVID hit, it completely disrupted their entire nature of work and, in a sense, they didn't have a manual or a guide - as no one did - on how to navigate the pandemic and its effect on supporting vulnerable communities."
Community organisations are the "fabric" which engage CALD communitiies and provide a source of cohesion, Dr Varghese said. That, he says, has been thrown off balance during the pandemic.
Project leader Professor Rebecca Wickes said information provided by health authorities in the early stages of the pandemic was rapidly changing, and did not take into account the unique challenges faced by many CALD communities.
"Outbreaks of COVID were also over-represented in some of these minority groups, underlining the need to better tailor messages for future crises," she said.
"I think almost everyone recognised that for communities to receive that information and act upon it, the community organisations need to be better supported," Dr Varghese added.
"Because the whole world turned online, and many of these community groups were previously doing work in in-person spaces, there was a huge need for support and projects like this to support their online work: how to use social media, how to better empower young people to access information and to even understand the ways they were accessing it and passing it to their families."
Together, they collaborated to produce the online guide for CALD organisations to understand social and digital media spaces used by young people.
It contains a set of digital activities, case studies and templates tailored for organisations to use and action with the specific communities they work with.
“Each community organisation is different. The playbook takes into account the social and cultural characteristics of their youth and the unique ways in which they engage with each other in online spaces,” Dr Varghese said.
“For instance, many migrant communities often use voice-based communication such as voice notes in WhatsApp. They can be better supported by information provided through audio-visual communication channels rather than just sending out text bulletins.”
Mr Tuala described the playbook as a "stepping stone" that can be used by cultural community workers and young people they work with.
"It does start you off in good stead when you're starting to think about utilsing youth voice, and creating projects around content creation. It's just a great starting point," he said.
Researchers say the playbook will be useful for both government and community organisations in reaching young people through online platforms to create effective mass public health communication.
Dr Varghese also noted recent government initiatives, such as the Victorian government's Multicultural Communication Outreach Program, which offers grants of between $5,000 and $100,000 to support multicultural communities to produce and distribute content on COVID-19 vaccination and COVID-safe behaviour.
"Now, in hindsight, it strikes as pretty obvious. But communities being given the means to spread their own message, and if it's coming from community leaders, it's much more effective than if it's just coming from just an institutional or medicalised perspective," he said.
Mr Tuala agrees.
"It's really a common sense approach; you are going to listen to the people that you respect, so put the information in those people's hands and then let them deliver that information in the way that they understand their community will best understand it," he said.
The report found empowering CALD young people involved several key steps, starting with understanding their existing digital literacies, and how they consume information.
Researchers recommended training for CALD youth to understand technologies and discern misinformation, and specific training with those who were hardly reached with skill and trust-building activities.
For Mr Tuala, empowering young people in his community comes down to being flexible, and offering them ownership.
"If we're not utilising the youth voice in a raw, honest fashion, we are doing ourselves a disservice," he said.
And as the country navigates its roadmap out of the COVID-19 pandemic, this will only continue to be crucial.
"Going forward, it's about reactivation of public spaces, vaccines, and booster shots," Dr Varghese said.
