Building a stronger community thanks to FRRR and Gardiner Foundation

26 Jul Building a stronger community thanks to FRRR and Gardiner Foundation

Earlier this month Camperdown Community House was recognised as one of 24 grant recipients from the Gardiner Dairy Foundation and the Foundation for Rural & Regional Renewal (FRRR) 2017 Working in Dairy Communities Small Grants Program.

The Working in Dairy Communities Small Grants Program provides grants of up to $5,000 for projects that aim to strengthen Victorian dairy communities, build their capacity to deal with local issues, and enhance existing community infrastructure.

Our project “Strengthening Community Engagement” will further develop our website and social media presence and increase communication and community engagement.

The Camperdown and District Community House has been undergoing a rebranding and capacity building process over the last two years to increase our relevance, effectiveness and achievement of positive health and wellbeing outcomes for our community through the engagement in our services and programs.

The project is the continuation of the very successful Healthy Aging initiative in 2016. This initiative was focussed predominantly on the development and implementation of healthy aging/living programs, services, events and groups.

The initiative also provided the opportunity to engage in broader organisational development, inclusive of strategic planning, branding development and the beginnings of a community engagement strategy.

During this initiative, the organisation’s first formal strategic plan was developed, which included the statement “Build our identity and relevance through effective communication” as the second core strategy and commitment, of which this current project is designed to meet the strategic imperatives and desired outcomes as determined in this plan.

Last year’s healthy aging initiative provided the opportunity to engage a local and skilled media/promotions contractor, which enabled the beginning stages of the rebranding process and establishing a social media presence and a stronger and more modernised website presence.

These mediums are increasingly important tools to share information and engage people within the community in our organisational culture and activities. The capacity to build and manage these sites and develop a stronger presence was not held within the organisation at that time, and as such, engaging a contractor was essential for the facilitation of this aspect of the organisation’s development.

This new funding allocation aims to further progress this by establishing a more formal community engagement strategy and strengthening the organisation’s capacity and ability to make our programs, services, groups and events more visible and accessible to the Camperdown and district community.

The project will commence August 2017 and will include short term and longer term goals/milestones, including:

• Development of formal engagement strategy;
• Weekly updates (stories, outreach, events, ‘what’s on’, etc.) on CCH social media
• Fortnightly and monthly updates on CCH website, specifically more detailed ‘blogs’ and engaging material
• Monthly local newspaper updates (event calendar, stories, promotion etc.)
• Term based newsletter
• Event posters, promotion and ongoing branding development
• Coordinated liaising and partnership development with other local and regional community groups and service agencies

For further information contact Camperdown Community House Coordinator Emily Mercer on 03 5593 1403.