INFoRM and the Our Future Together newsletter
In the 1990s, agencies working with migrants and refugees in Christchurch established a collaborative, face-to-face forum through which cross-sectoral issues could be raised and addressed, sector updates shared, and relationships fostered. Following the 22 February 2011 earthquake, this group was renamed INFoRM (Interagency Network For Refugees and Migrants). The network has met regularly (usually every six weeks) since its inception, and since 2018 has been co-facilitated by the Christchurch City Council (CCC) and the Office of Ethnic Communities (OEC). CRS is a core member of this group.
INFoRM has been especially active in the past few months, in the aftermath of the 15 March 2019 mosque attacks. The network has been meeting very regularly, with its meetings fulfilling the same role as before but with a particular focus on supporting the victims and the city’s ethnic communities more broadly. These meetings have been attended by INFoRM’s usual members as well as representatives of government and non-government agencies tasked with caring for the victims. In this way, INFoRM has provided a space for agencies to share information and updates related to the aftermath of the attacks.
The CCC has been collating and circulating these updates through mailing lists, and has decided to publish them in a regular newsletter, ‘Our Future Together’. The newsletter also contains information on events and issues related to Christchurch’s ethnic communities, and is thus intended to contribute to the realisation of the Christchurch Multicultural Strategy.
The newsletter is available online via the Resilience Hub website, under the “About the Hub” tab.