Culture Spring according to Nahsh
Culture Spring is a Youth-led Social Enterprise. A program that helps bridge the gap between organisations and multicultural young people. To get a better understanding of the program, we sat down with Nahshon (Nahsh), Culture Spring’s Project Lead to learn more about the program and get to know Nahsh!
Nahsh, a Samoan man, moved to Australia from Aotearoa (New Zealand) around 5 years ago. Originally moving for personal reasons, Nahsh soon “loved” Melbourne after at first being unsure.
“I honestly never wanted to move to Australia,” says Nahsh.
“I’m a big All Blacks fan and I was like ‘I will never be in that country.’”
Nahsh, at heart and by trade, is a graphic designer, but he was never really interested in starting a studio or getting into marketing. With his community a priority factor for him, Nahsh decided to become a youth employment mentor and soon started seeing cracks in the system.
“I got to see what young people are really facing; what it looks like on the ground especially when you’re on Centrelink. The system then didn’t feel like it was there to fix [things] because we’re just turning people over and away,” Nahsh says.
“I didn’t like that. It was something that didn’t sit right with me and so I really wanted to move into a different space but still work with young people.”
According to Nahsh, “that’s when Culture Spring popped up.” It came as an opportunity for Nahsh to directly affect the lives of multicultural young people and in his role, he does exactly just that.
To explain the program in his own terms, Nahsh says that “I like to say that Culture Spring is the engine room of CMY.”
“We want to empower young people to be the change that they want to see, but we also want to empower organisations to create space for young people to be able to do that.”
Nahsh is particularly fond of the work that Culture Spring does as, when he was a young person himself, he wishes that he had a program like Culture Spring to help guide him.
“I grew up in the “hood”, as they say,” says Nahsh.
“I didn’t understand that these kinds of things existed before, like ‘Ohhh I could do a co-design to help create a whole Parliament initiative? What!?’ So for me, I have a deep passion to actually help reach out further than just the highly engaged and informed young people that come into CMY.”
The Culture Spring team is going from strength to strength. After their official launch in 2023, Culture Spring’s team has been building over the last two years. With four team members working in “full force,” Nahsh has never been prouder of their efforts.
“I remember a moment just sitting back like ‘ohh yes, this is working,’” Nahsh says.
“We’ve got some momentum and are where we want to be. Everyone’s in motion of knowing what they’re up to, what they’re trying to achieve but also having fun.”
We asked Nahsh what song summed up his 2025 so far. It’s ABBA’s ‘Take a Chance On Me.’
“I would say across different spaces within Culture Spring, we are just trying things out and convincing everyone else around us to take a chance on us as well.”
Culture Spring are currently on the look out for organisations to collaborate with them. Want to get involved with Culture Spring? Send Nahsh an email at nneru@cmy.net.au.