Page 127 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 14 February 2012
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Mrs Rita Martiniello
Canberra Greek Glendi
National Multicultural Festival
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
MR DOSZPOT (Brindabella) (6.18): In my capacity as shadow minister for education and also multicultural affairs, last Sunday I had the pleasure of attending a number of very interesting and pleasurable functions. Mrs Dunne has already spoken at some length about one of the functions I attended, and that was the lunch of The Bambino Book by Mrs Rita Martiniello. Mrs Martiniello wrote this book, The Bambino Book, initially for her eight grandchildren to help them with learning to speak Italian, the basics of Italian, and to assist with their understanding of Italian culture.
Her wonderful initiative has grown into an opportunity for other members of the wider community to also learn the basics of Italian language and to learn about the culture through this wonderful book. I congratulate not only Rita Martiniello but also her husband, Pasquale, and their five wonderful children—and of course the eight grandchildren who were the catalyst for this project starting and their whole family on their commitment to this exercise that grew out of a very interesting idea at the CIT.
On that note I guess I should also offer my congratulations to Rita’s mentor, Marilyn Politi, who was her teacher at the CIT—she gave Rita that first spark and enthusiasm to start on this project—and also Marilyn Politi’s husband, Michael Politi, who added a further dimension to The Bambino Book by assisting with the production of a DVD that is also included with The Bambino Book. I must say it is a great initiative and I commend everyone—the rather large Martiniello family, as well as their friends and all the roughly 200 people who helped her to celebrate the launch of The Bambino Book last Sunday.
On that same day, Sunday, I also attended the Greek Glendi, which was part of the Multicultural Festival and took place within the celebrating throngs that gathered around the very large multicultural celebrations in Garema Place. The Greek Glendi is a celebration of Greek culture, food and music. We were treated to examples of all of those categories—food, Greek dancing, music and wonderful performances by a large number of youth groups that contributed to a very festive occasion last Sunday.
The Hellenic Club was, as usual, one of the sponsors of the event. Paul Levantis, the president of the Greek community, gave a wonderful speech outlining all of the initiatives that have occurred in the community and all of the people that contributed to the wonderful Glendi on Sunday.
A further event I attended was at the invitation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Lyneham. I was the guest of state president John Larkin. We listened to the service that was carried out. It was their national meeting, with a lot of their various state organisations attending. The service featured talks on spirituality, family respect and family values. The keynote speaker was church elder Geoffrey Cummins, who spoke at length about the family values that they espouse.
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