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The Make a Change community program in the Lancefield-Cobaw region – what is it and why are we here?

On October 3 2015, a burn planned by Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning escaped containment lines burning 3000 hectares of land, destroying property and infrastructure as well as causing much distress and devastation to the local community.

Only the residents themselves and those involved could fully understand the impact that these fires caused. Having had close family impacted by the Arthurs Creek / Strathewen fires, one can only imagine how stressful and devastating it must have been.

We understand much support has been provided to assist with the fire recovery including property repairs and funding for community assets.

Make a Change has been invited to come to this fire affected region to offer support in a different way.

Our support is through the Make a Change Community Program – specifically for people who are contributing to the community or who want to contribute for improvements needed now or for the future.

At Make a Change, we’ve been involved in contributing and working on community projects for many many years. We understand how hard, exhausting and frustrating it can be. We also understand what it takes to make something happen and how rewarding it is when it happens. We don’t believe there is enough acknowledgement for the people that are willing to take on the challenges in their community and do something about it. We see there is a gap, a big gap – in acknowledgement and support. Knowing that you are not alone, that the challenges are experienced by people working in their own communities all over Australia and creating new connections and pathways to make it easier and making projects happen is what we are about.

Recent events highlight the need to work together and support one another. They also provide the opportunity to reflect on what is needed and wanted for the community and how to make it happen. This is another way Make a Change can assist over the coming months through the Make a Change community program.

We’ve had the privilege of getting to know some of the residents over the last couple of months and finding out what’s happening. We can see that in this region the community spirit is extremely strong and community leadership is well and truly present. The work we do at Make a Change is here to support those who are already involved in contributing to their community as well as those who want to contribute but are not yet doing so.

As a start, we’re here to listen, to find out what you want to achieve, what do you see is needed for your community, what are you already working on and what is your vision for the future? These are the questions we’ve been exploring via our What do Your Reckon campaign and we’ll be exploring at our first event on June 5 called Celebrating Community.

Everyone is welcome to attend, we really look forward to getting to know you better at this event and through the coming months.

Find out more about the workshops and events we’re running as part of this program

Warm Regards

Karen Corr and the Make a Change team