LINK Community Transport

One of the Australian Communities Foundation’s MacroMelbourne projects is the Hume and Whittlesea Community Shuttle Service. The Service aims to meet critical transport needs in the municipalities of Hume and Whittlesea through a program co-ordinating volunteer drivers and community vehicles. The service is targeting the elderly, people with disabilities, single mothers and young people and will assist people to get to medical appointments, employment, social and recreational activities where there is a lack of accessible public transport. The service is operated by LINK Community Transport and Hume City and City of Whittlesea Councils.

Funding for the service has been provided by Australian Communities Foundation donors, State and local government, local agencies and business, including Ford Australia who donated two vehicles and one individual’s extraordinary generosity towards the project.

A local Craigieburn resident (who wishes to remain anonymous) donated $100,000 to LINK Community Transport to purchase two new buses. One was specifically earmarked for the Craigieburn Community Transport Service and one would be for LINK’s broader community transport service. The donor is a long term Craigieburn resident and is passionate about supporting the Craigieburn community. He is also an avid car enthusiast, being a Ford man through and through. When he heard about Ford Australia supporting the Craigieburn service he decided to donate the money to purchase a new Ford Transit van to help expand the Craigieburn service. The vehicle has been ordered and will be modified to be wheelchair accessible. It will become part of the Craigieburn service in December, 2011.

Common Ground, Queensland

Common Ground is a non-profit organisation founded in New York in 1990 and is now an international leader in developing services to reduce homelessness. The Common Ground model of supportive housing accommodation provides long-term, stable accommodation combined with on-site support services. The aim is to provide apartment buildings where tenants can have afford-able, safe and positive homes, which are not boarding houses but  individual dwellings where the homeless might be integrated with other low-income workers.

On any night in inner city Brisbane more than 2000 people are homeless. Common Ground Queensland will provide a solution to end homelessness for the most vulnerable and chronically homeless in Queensland. Its vision is to complement existing services by working in partnership with community, government, business and philanthropy to create permanent homes integrated with support for individuals and families who are homeless in Queensland.

In 2010, Thérèse Rein launched Brisbane’s Common Ground.

SecondBite

SecondBite collects surplus fresh food from markets, growers, retailers, caterers and redistributes to agencies and people in need. In 2010, 148 agencies across Melbourne were supported by Secondbite including, the Asylum Seekers Resource Centre, St Vincent de Paul in Collingwood, the Coolibah Centre at the Brotherhood of St Laurence, Fitzroy and St Mary’s House of Welcome, also in Fitzroy.

SecondBite’s services significantly improve the nutritional value and variety of food these agencies are able to provide for their meal programs and most importantly, reduce the costs of their program. SecondBite's deliveries of fruit, vegetables and meat saves St Mary's almost $1,000 a week, and helps provide healthy food to the people who access their services.   

Redirecting surplus food to people in need is an excellent way to reduce food waste and help the environment. Any food collected that is not fit for redistribution for any reason goes to Carradene Farm in Melton or Bedford Farm in Bulla, and is fed to their farm animals.

www.secondbite.org

Environment Victoria

Despite the winter rains and floods in 2011, the urgency to protect and restore the Murray River remains. Boom and bust cycles of drought and flood are a reminder of the kind of weather climate scientists have been telling us to expect. Water in the Murray needs to be secured now, so that when the next dry weather comes, the river stands a chance.

The Windsor Inquiry into the socio-economic impacts of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan was announced in the aftermath of the release of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority Guide last October. The findings of the Inquiry have been released with one of the recommendations being to suspend all ‘non-strategic water buybacks’.

In contrast, Environment Victoria believes that voluntary water buybacks must continue as they are the most effective and efficient way of returning water to the environment. The Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists has also been critical of the Windsor report, which they say  won’t save the Basin.

Environment Victoria is campaigning to have 7600 billion litres of water returned to the Murray-Darling Basin. They argue that any less will put rivers and the communities that depend on them in jeopardy. A healthy Murray-Darling basin would deliver almost $10 billion in environmental, social and economic benefits to Australians.

www.environmentvictoria.org.au

Swinburne University, in association with ANU, publishes the on-line news analysis magazine, Inside Story.  Inside Story provides high-quality analysis and reportage by university researchers and journalists of issues affecting Australia and the world.

Much of the coverage in the Australian media is driven by crises – such as the post election violence in Kenya or the fighting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo etc.  This contributes to the widely held impression that the continent is not only gripped by continuous crisis, but that all efforts to improve social conditions there have failed due to endemic conflict, corruption, power struggles etc.

A series of 12 articles, to be published on a monthly basis in Inside Story and The Canberra Times over 2011, will report on daily life and social and political change in East Africa. The articles are designed to build a more nuanced view of Africa for Australian readers and will be written in an accessible, personal style in order to appeal to the widest possible audience. 

The series of articles will also be actively promoted to other journalists and newspaper editors.

Funding will be used to pay Xan Rice, a South African born journalist based in Nairobi, to research and write the articles. Other costs, such as editing, photography etc, will be covered by Inside Story.

The aim is to demonstrate to other media a different way of reporting from the developing world. Feedback from readers will provide a gauge of the impact of the articles and their underlying messages on the Australian public. Take up of the articles by other media will also provide an indicator of the project’s success in promoting the message.

The website: Inside Story   
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

A number of Melbourne Community Foundation donors have established ongoing scholarships or awards with tertiary institutions, either to commemorate family members with a link to the institution, to  support  particular target groups of students ( Indigenous, disadvantaged)   or those who  are undertaking studies in the area of the donors’ business or other interests.

Highlighted below are three of the scholarships awarded in February 2011.
 
The June Shenfield Poetry Award commemorates the work and life of June Shenfield. June was a poet, playwright and performance artist who graduated from Swinburne in 1980. It is an annual award, given for the best piece of poetry written by a Swinburne student from any faculty, as judged by a panel of professional writers and editors. In 2010 there were 72 entries.
 
Richardson Award. Antoinette Richardson taught Auditing, Accounting and Taxation for over 20 years at Swinburne. She was a committed teacher and the award commemorates her commitment to, and passion for, her students. The Award is made to the top achieving student in the second year of financial Information systems.
 
Unico Swinburne Equity Scholarship is provided to an undergraduate student from a low socio-economic background, who has successfully completed the first year of their 3 year Information &Communication Technology course. Provides contribution to living costs, textbooks and mentoring/tutoring.  Unico is a technology consultancy and services company.
 
Outcomes sought and indicators of success
Each of these awards aims to support students to achieve the best they can in a particular area of endeavour and to reward them for doing so. In the case of the Richardson and Unico grants, the students need to have successfully completed part of their course to qualify and the progress through their course can be tracked. In the case of the poetry award, the two successful poems each year are published on the Swinburne website and in several cases the winners have continued with their involvement  poetry writing and performance.

Australian Federation of University Women Victoria (AFUW)   

AFUW Victoria is a not for profit organisation, founded in 1920 and affiliated with the Australian Federation of Graduate Women and the International Federation of University Women.  

The current scholarship program offers scholarships to women enrolled in universities in Victoria, women who have experienced disadvantage in the pursuit of their studies.  These include awards specifically for Indigenous women. Disadvantage is defined broadly and may include low income, family responsibilities, geographical isolation, disability, English as a second language and migrant or refugee status.  Since  1931,  the  scholarships have enabled 196 women to continue their university courses and go on to contribute to society through their research and professional activities.  This year scholarships ranging from $2,000 to $5,000 were awarded to 13 students. Experience is that relatively small sums of money can make a big difference to students.  As one of the winners of a $2000 scholarship said, “You might as well have given me a million dollars.”  

AFUW Victoria - www.afuwvic.org.au 

Documentary Australia Foundation

'Hope' the story of Amal, one of 400 Iraqi refugees on the ill-fated SIEV X, and one of only seven who survived when the boat sank between Indonesia and Australia, premiered at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2008. It was also screened to very receptive audiences in commercial cinemas in major capital cities.

'Hope' is an excellent example of the difficulty for refugees to restore their lives and to live with respect and dignity in Australia. It also shows the compassion and work of many individuals and organizations who work tirelessly to change the situation.

To take the film to a wider community, an education and outreach program has been devised to enable screening of the film outside metropolitan areas. Community groups campaigning on refugee issues have been engaged to host screenings of the film and Steve Thomas, the filmmaker, travels with the film to present Q&As at the screenings.

Steve Thomas outside the parish hall in Rosebud, Victoria where screenings of  'Hope' were held.

Cara Inc

Teenage girls who are single, pregnant and living in care are unlikely participants in mainstream pre and post natal classes or other educational and support services offered in the community.

CARA In Safe Hands program provides support and care for these young women who are mums-to-be or young mums and who do not have extended family support or partners to help during their pregnancy or after the birth of their baby. Living in supported accommodation with a house parent, the young women learn about caring for their babies as well as receiving educational and life skills supports.

As the young women in the program have experienced family breakdown, In Safe Hands provides the young women with skills to be confident parents and to make positive choices about their future and the future of the babies.

Living and sharing experiences with other young women also reduces the social isolation of these young women and as well as the feeling of “being different” from their friends and peers.

Broadmeadows Uniting Care

The “Share My Plate" recipe book is a project that has grown out of weekly Tuesday night dinners that are run out of the Asylum Seeker Welcome Centre in Brunswick for asylum seekers and people connected with the Centre.
"Share My Plate" is a compilation of recipes from around the world that have been prepared at the dinners and each dish tells a story about culture, family and place.

For many people arriving in a new country, food and cooking not only provides the opportunity to maintain connection with home and family and friends, it also provides opportunities for people to build an identity for themselves and connection with other members of their community.

Recipes for meals from the countries of the people who attend or volunteer at the Centre, and the stories surrounding the preparation and sharing of those meals, provides Melbournians with opportunities to connect with the cultures of MelbourneÙs newest residents, generating more opportunities for community connectedness.