City Council appoints multicultural adviser

5 February 2003

Jenni Marr is the Christchurch City Council’s multicultural adviser, a new three-day-a-week position.

Ms Marr has a masters degree in Social Sciences and “a life-long interest and commitment to working with and learning from people of many diverse cultures”. She comes to the Council from Kingdom Resources where she was a career development adviser and tutor.

Her career includes a decade spent working in the Philippines on community development.

One of the Council’s aims is to make the city one where all people, of whatever background, feel welcome and it has allocated money to help achieve this aim.

Councillor Anna Crighton, who chairs the Arts Culture and Heritage Committee, says Ms Marr’s appointment is a positive step.

“It’s acknowledgement by the City Council that Christchurch is a multicultural society and that the employing of an adviser in this area reinforces the council’s responsibilities toward harmony,” Anna Crighton says.

Jenni Marr is looking forward to her new job. “In the beginning I think the job will involve a lot of listening to people from the city’s many ethnic communities and understanding their perspectives on the issues,” she says.

Among her first tasks will be to support the launch on March 24 of a new intercultural assembly, a project which came from a Mayoral working party on ethnic relations. The assembly is timed to tie in with Race Unity Day, on 21 March.

Jenni Marr’s hours are 8.45am to 4.45pm on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, as part of the Council Community Relations Unit. She can be contacted on 941 8097.

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