While Covid-19 has impacted the whole world, it is important to remember everyone's experience will be different.

Much of our community messaging and strategies are focused towards the majority.

This assumes people have a certain education level, cognitive ability, access to technology, financial capability, language, and relate within similar cultures and social structures.

This is often at the exclusion of minority groups.

One minority group in central Victoria includes refugees and people from multicultural and multilingual backgrounds.

For many of these community members the experiences of Covid-19 are markedly different.

The updates we all rely on to understand what is unfolding is often not accessible to people of non-English speaking backgrounds.

They have needed to rely on local services to translate information into a format they can understand.

Many people from non-English speaking backgrounds can speak in their mother tongue but cannot read or write in English.

In uncertain times we rely on information as scaffolding to protect us.

This information is simply not as available for everyone.

While many of us are fear for the virus' impact on our physical health, there are some fearing for their personal safety from other community members.

I was saddened in what I heard in a recent conversation with a local multicultural service.

I was told many of our multicultural community members have been targeted, experienced racism, spoken to aggressively and endured property damage.

Many are too scared to leave their homes out of fear.

It is believed that people of Asiatic appearance are being targeted due to a misconceived belief they are more likely to have Covid-19.

Many have lost their jobs and risk not being re-employed in the future and despite significant skills, the language barrier may prevent them from being a preferred applicant at interview.

It's vital that when we talk about community that this is inclusive of all people.

Local multicultural services have been working incredibly hard throughout this pandemic to provide daily briefings in a variety of ways and languages.

While the pandemic challenges us we need to all be aware of the additional challenges and experiences that some groups face and be responsive to these.

We need to recognise the contribution multicultural and refugee community members made before the pandemic and work to ensure, where possible, their jobs are available to them when business restarts.

While it is common for us to be fearful of what the future holds, we need to question some of our judgments and behaviours that may simply not be right.

We need to demonstrate kindness, understanding and an unconditional positive regard for all members of the community and help everyone get through this.

Loddon Campaspe Multicultural Services can be contacted on 5441 6644.

Lifeline crisis support can be accessed via Translating and Interpreting Service (TIS).

To access Lifeline, call TIS on 131 450 and ask to talk to Lifeline on 13 11 14 in the language required.

Rebecca Cornish is the chief executive of Lifeline Central Victoria and Mallee.