RESEARCH STRATEGIES AND REPORTS
10-year Regional Participation Action Plan for the Wimmera Southern Mallee
In 2023, the Centre for Participation (CfP) and partners recognised the need to bolster community participation across the region to address evolving challenges and opportunities facing communities.
With support from State and Federal Government, CfP engaged the community to develop a comprehensive 10-year Regional participation action plan aimed at enhancing community participation across the Wimmera Southern Mallee. The plan was developed with community through interviews, community workshops and a ‘Community Drivers Group’.
The Wimmera Southern Mallee community clearly expressed structural and social barriers that are getting in the way of supporting all people to actively participate in the community.
They also expressed a clear 10-year vision of a region with thriving community participation and identified key areas for action required to get there.
Social Enterprise – A pathway to work for people disengaged and marginalised from the workforce
Social enterprises deliver significant benefits for disadvantaged or marginalised segments of society that need assistance to transform their social or economic prospects. For individuals they provide meaningful work and skills development and provide a pathway into mainstream employment. In this way they also reduce unemployment in a region and contribute to increased connections and community vitality. From a broader perspective, social enterprises have the potential to grow established businesses and drive inclusive economic growth.
The individual and community benefits achieved from social enterprises were the drivers behind our Chief Executive Officer, Robbie Millar’s International Fellowship report. Robbie has grown up and worked in in the Wimmera Southern Mallee for over 19 years and is passionate about improving the lives of disadvantaged people across the region. The region suffers from many challenges including poverty, marginalisation, disengagement with education, and difficulties gaining employment. However, through his work at the Centre for Participation (CfP), Robbie saw the opportunity of social enterprise to address these social problems, improve lives and strengthen the community.
Volunteering, Participatory Action and Social Cohesion
Over the past decade, the experience and extent of social cohesion has declined in Australia. The Scanlon Foundation Social Cohesion survey, which has measured social cohesion annually since 2007, has found most recently: increased feelings of discrimination, increased pessimism, increased fear of terror and crime in the community, decreased trust in private and public institutions.
This is at a time when communities across Australia continue to face many challenges to social cohesion, including unprecedented bushfires, and as we write, the COVID-19 pandemic which continues. At the same time, although Australia has some of the highest volunteering participation rates in the world, the rates of formal volunteering are declining (36 per cent to 31 per cent between 2010 to 2014 (ABS, 2014a) with an estimated further 40 per cent drop during the COVID-19 pandemic due to restrictions on movement and assembly.
In seeking to understand the contribution that volunteering makes to social cohesion, the Department of Social Services (DSS) commissioned the Centre for Participation and Think Impact to conduct a national research project conducted from June 2018 to August 2020. This work was guided by the National Network of Volunteer Resource Centres (NNVRC) which formed in 2017 to share knowledge and experience from their diverse regions and plan for the future.
The Wimmera Southern Mallee Community Learning Strategy 2016 – 2021
Shaping a sustainable, responsive and effective community learning sector.
The purpose of the strategy is to guide the Wimmera Southern Mallee community in developing a more sustainable community learning sector that is responsive to local community need, and that is effective in engaging learners and supporting their achievement of meaningful learning outcomes.
This strategy is targeted at organisations that deliver both ‘Learn Local’ funded and other forms of community learning across the Wimmera Southern Mallee and at those organisations that can contribute to shaping a more sustainable, responsive and effective community learning sector for the benefit of the entire region.
Learning for opportunity
Adult community education has a critical role to play within the education sector. It fills a gap by providing access to education for people that might otherwise not engage with learning. Learning and the ability to learn are essential enablers for individuals to lead productive and rewarding lives and make a contribution to creating just, healthy and prosperous societies.
In Victoria, the Department of Education and Training supports adult community education through funding Learn Local courses delivered by community organisations known as Learn Local Organisations. The intent of these courses is to engage adult learners who may have previously experienced barriers to education and support them onto a pathway into employment, further education or training.
The research findings and the vision are framed around three key themes ‘sustainable, responsive and effective’ to reflect the interconnected and dynamic nature of the system. These themes have been developed to better articulate the shared vision of the Department of Education and Training, the Learn Local sector, and their stakeholders. The current Department’s vision is for the sector to be “sustainable and relevant”. The overriding response from the sector asks for the system to be more than just relevant to community needs; it asks for it to be genuinely responsive to the community needs.
Connections, compliance and community: The changing face of volunteering in regional Victoria
Volunteering is at the heart of healthy communities. Some would say that it is the glue that holds us together in good times and bad, and the benefits are enormous to you, your family, and your community. Is this an ideological view or is it a reality? Then we started wondering, if volunteering creates such important benefits for individuals and communities… why are volunteer involving organisations struggling to attract volunteers?
In December 2011 the Wimmera Volunteers Board decided it needed to better understand how to strengthen volunteering in the Wimmera. With that end in mind Wimmera Volunteers asked Net Balance to research the role and value of volunteering in the Wimmera; engaging volunteers, communities and the three levels of government all of whom have an interest in volunteering in regional Victoria. In July 2012 and Wimmera Volunteers is very pleased to present the ‘Connections, Compliance and Community: The changing face of volunteering in regional Victoria’ report.