Cultural Diversity Week 2017 Mini Grants Guideline

To celebrate Cultural Diversity Week (CDW) 2017 in March, Banyule City Council (Australia) is offering mini grants of up to $300 for people to learn more about Victoria's cultural and religious diversity.

Who can apply?

Clubs, community groups and schools that are located within Banyule can apply for the mini grant.

What can the grant be used for?

1) Supporting your group, club or school to attend a cultural museum.

2) Hosting your own event and inviting a guest speaker or cultural performer.

Museum visits

Melbourne has a number of fantastic museums that display different cultures. A list of suggested cultural museums is included in this document. But you can also visit other museums.

Hosting your own event

The grant can be used to invite a musician, dancer or guest speaker from the Victorian multicultural community to perform at your event. For a list of speakers and performers, visit www.multicultural.vic.gov.au.

How to apply

To apply for the grant visit banyule.smartygrants.com.au. Applications must be sent by 27 January 2017. You will need to provide the following information:

1) Tell us in 100 words or less how your group would benefit from the cultural education experience.

2) Tell us the museum you plan to attend or which cultural performer or guest speaker you will invite.

3) Provide a budget of your activity and the number of people who will take part.

4) If possible, tell us when the event or museum visit will be held.

We encourage applications from groups that intend to hold their event or museum visit during Cultural Diversity Week March 2017. If this is not possible, at the latest, the event or museum visit must occur before the end of April 2017.

If you have any questions please contact the Community and Social Planning team on 9490 4222. You will be informed of the result of your application by 17 February 2017.

With rapid advances in medical science, cloning is slowly but surely looking like it could be in our near future. However, is it really an option that should be considered as a way to extend human life?

Reproductive cloning may help human families gain children, but there’s also a benefit for the animal world. It brings hope to people eager for children but unable to have their own or adopt. It can also bring about the recreation of species that have long since died, allowing scientists to fully study the species as a living creature instead of simply looking at images or bones.

Many believe that cloning can be used to replace failing organs. This will reduce the waiting list for organ donations and allow more people to be saved. Not only that, but because the organ is, in fact, your own organ, there would be less chance of rejection.

Cloning could prove helpful in genetic research. Using cloning technologies, genetic researchers would have a better understanding of the composition of genes and the effects of genetic constituents (成分) on human characters. There’s also the possibility of changing genetic constituents in cloned humans, and cloning could help fight genetic diseases.

While the cloning of body organs can help extend human life, it could also cause a lot of malpractice (玩忽职守). Along with the ability to clone desired characters, there could be the possibility of people deliberately reproducing undesired characters. This could lead to a rise in malpractices within society.

Cloning involves a process of creating identical genes. As such, there would be a lack of diversity in humankind. Scientists believe this lack of diversity will lower the human race's ability to adapt.

Whatever your view on cloning may be, studies show that the clone would in fact not be completely identical to the original just as twins are not completely identical. Though they might look alike, twins have different personalities and enjoy different things. The same could be said of clones. Even if technology were created in which your memories and thoughts could be transmitted (传送) to the clone, your clone would still be a different person.