Wagga's Punjabi community will bring their culture, books, and activities to Wagga City Library as part of a new pilot program to bring more multicultural flair to regional libraries.
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The pilot is being run by Charles Sturt University academics in social work and information studies, who are hoping to expand the program to other cultures and libraries all over regional Australia.
The program kicked off on Friday, and for the next four weeks they will be asking members of the Punjabi and Sikh community what events they would like to see at the Wagga library.
One of them is Aman Pasricha, who said he would like to share his culture with the rest of Wagga, saying that sharing with others was a core tenant of Sikhism.
"We call it "seva", which means self-sacrifice, which means you share everything you have," Mr Pasricha said.
"You share your money, you share your food, and you share your thoughts and your views as well."
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Daman Uppal said he hoped to reach more people in the community through the library, saying they were always looking for people in need of help.
"The Sikh community has always worked for any person who is in need in the past, the present, and the future. We are a small community here, but we're always looking for a cause which we can gather around," Mr Uppal said.
"Whenever any needs a helping hand they can ask us any time."
One of the people spearheading the project is CSU social work lecturer Sabine Wardle, who grew up in Punjab herself.
Dr Wardle said she wanted to keep that language and culture alive in her own children, and to preserve the language and culture of other emerging groups in Wagga.
"Working for the community is at the heart of Sikh values and working in partnership and sharing, and that's at the heart of this project," Dr Wardle said.
"We want to highlight those bourgeoning communities as they're emerging and make the local library more inclusive by hearing what they have to say and adapting to the cultural needs of the community as demographics change."
Library services manager Claire Campbell said they were looking forward to welcoming more members of the multicultural community into the library.
"We're very excited about the Punjabi project. We do a lot of work in this space with lots of different communities, but this is something brand new for us," she said.
"We've got such a big growth in multicultural communities coming to Wagga, and we want them to feel welcome because the library is a welcoming space for everyone."
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