With each sketch, colour and brush stroke, Tauranga youngsters will reflect on what it means to embrace diversity in our community.

For the fourth year, Multicultural Tauranga is holding an art competition for Year 5-6 students to create awareness among youth about the range of ethnicities and cultures around us.

The theme for this year's competition is ‘Awhihia Te Rito - Nuture The Young'.

'[Students] goal is to draw an example of how we can embrace the diversity that we have, that we live with and think about what our community may look like and feel like if we treated everyone with respect and dignity," says Multicultural Tauranga's creative officer Alessandra Tilby.

Alessandra says in New Zealand we now have 25 per cent of the population born overseas and 160 languages spoken here 'and it's time that we learn about other cultures so that we can better appreciate diversity”.

Alessandra says the competition is about respecting different cultures, art, language and clothing that people bring to our community.

'It's all about teaching our young and enabling them with the knowledge and giving them the hands on experience.

"They have a goal, there's a prize at the end of it but they take the theme and they have to think about it, and then they have to draw it.”

The competition is being run to line up with the ‘Treaty based Multicultural Day' on August 24, where there will be results and a prizegiving ceremony.

For schools interested in registering for the competition, email: creativeofficer@trmc.co.nz to request an art pack. The competition will run July 1-August 14.