To celebrate the AFL’s Multicultural Round, Sydney Swans defender Aliir Aliir will travel to Wagga Wagga on Thursday to engage with the thriving local multicultural community.

Aliir will assist in conducting a session of the weekly local Multicultural Program at French’s Fields, offering guidance to an expected group of more than 40 youngsters from various backgrounds, including South Sudanese, Burmese, and Indian participants.

The Multicultural program has been running for more than five years, and has been enormously successful in uniting various diverse communities in Wagga Wagga, through relationships with key community figures and schools.

The program was the first of its kind in Southern NSW, and Thursday will be the first occasion an AFL listed Multicultural player has attended the program.

Aliir Aliir was drafted by the Sydney Swans with pick 44 in the 2013 AFL National Draft, and despite troubles with injury has shown great promise as an emerging defender, featuring amongst the Swans NEAFL team’s best players regularly.

The 20-year-old was born in Kenya to Sudanese parents, fled war-torn Africa to relocate to Australia aged 7, and didn’t begin playing junior football until he was 14.

AFL Multicultural Round, to be staged this weekend from August 7-9, was officially launched in Melbourne today.

The annual initiative, themed ‘Many Cultures, One Game’ highlights the contribution multicultural communities have made to the game’s history and welcomes new communities to embrace Australian Football as fans, players, umpires or administrators.

In 2015, 14% of AFL players listed are born overseas or have one parent who was born overseas.