Many People Many Hands

[00:00:02] Speaker A: It is an honour and privilege to welcome you to country. My name is Bree Morgan. I'm from this land and place. I'm from a deep bloodline of people who have walked, fought and cared for this land for over thousands of years. I pay my respect to our mother, Mountain Gulagah and the cultural significance she holds. We take pride in country. We feel and embrace it. It is our identity. It is who we are and where we come from. I want to start by recognising that we're the oldest living culture there is, the first and continuous custodians of this land. I am on my great grandmother's country, Yuin Country. My great grandmother was born at Tilba and raised in Wallagga. She was a Thomas who met my great grandfather, a Morgan. He was from Kumarangar which is down near the Victorian border where he grew up there on the reserve. They married and five kids later were living in Cobargo as the first Aboriginal family to move off the Wallagga Lake Mission into wire society. With that being said, I go forward with respect by acknowledging the Djiranganj people of the Yuin Nation as the original inhabitants of this land, waterways and airspace on which we gather upon. [00:01:12] Speaker B: Welcome to Stepping Up, a four part podcast series about community leadership in changing times. This is episode three. Many People, Many Hands. [00:01:26] Speaker C: It was very powerful and I think for myself, I can only speak for myself on this one. It helped my recovery because I was able to help others. As a community member I was seriously impacted as was everybody else, but I think because I was in the position of being able to help people, that really helped me. [00:01:46] Speaker B: I'm Leah Santo. I've lived and worked in the beautiful beaker Valley for 15 years. Most recently I had the opportunity to work with community leaders across the valley as part of the Investing in Rural Community Futures Program or ircf. The program provides training and support to strengthen the capability of our essential not for profit sector, enabling them to engage with and drive long term solutions and change. In many cases we have formed connections through our work or volunteering, but we may also know each other from school pickups, bumping into each other at the shops, casual introductions at social events or in some cases, we're good friends. The Beaker Valley is a small place where the lines between work, community, family and friendship are often intertwined. This episode focuses less on what not for profits and community organisations are doing and more on how they're doing it. We hear how the day to day of community work is really informed by the Deeper how, how we think about community, how we consider who we are serving and in which ways, and how we approach the future, the one we are currently heading towards and the one we would ideally like to build. A frequent undercurrent to this thinking is building on a vision of active, engaged communities with many people and many hands collaborating together. You'll hear from three Beaker Valley community leaders. Chris Walters from Cobargo Community Access Centre, Corinna Severs from Eden Community Access Centre and Kate Liston Mills, author and local advocate. [00:03:30] Speaker C: My name's Chris Walters. I'm the president of the Cobargo Community Access Centre, which is actually closing today. [00:03:36] Speaker B: Chris spoke to us on 28 June 2024. [00:03:39] Speaker C: But back in the early days, we would have 20, 30, 40 people coming through a day. Now we're down to about four or five a week. So the reason we're shutting up shop today is that we basically feel, yes, there are still people who need assistance and there always will be, but because of the contacts that we've made with all the other services and so forth, we're leaving our website open so that people will know where to go. But physically we don't actually need to be here. [00:04:14] Speaker D: My name's Karina Severs. I'm the manager here at the Eden Community Access Centre and I've been here probably five years. Basically, the Eden Community Access Centre. Its mission is to support the Eden community and surrounding villages both economically and socially and provide programs, support projects, auspicing projects, that type of thing, identify need and try and fill that need or cater to that need. [00:04:52] Speaker E: My name is Kate Liston Mills. I live in Pambula with my little family and I'm a librarian and a creative writer. I am a rubbish picker upper and I also am a mother and I'm on several committees and boards. I'm also a member of the Social. [00:05:11] Speaker B: Justice Advocates of the Sapphire coast, also known as sja. [00:05:16] Speaker E: I also help with fundraising. I help a few different groups with fundraising, P&C, et cetera, for schools. And yeah, I just love the Bega Valley Shire. [00:05:33] Speaker B: Each of the three women you'll hear today brings an approach to their work which is community led, pragmatic and at heart driven by seeing a need and just getting stuck in and doing what's needed. But what is also striking is the deeply holistic nature of this approach. You'll hear community leaders who are incredibly motivated by a sense of mission and purpose, who maintain focus on how to get things done rather than on who gets the credit. [00:06:00] Speaker C: The Cobargo Community Access Centre grew from the Cobargo Bushfire Relief Centre, which started immediately after the Black Summer bushfires with a bunch of volunteers up at the showground, where people sought refuge. We managed people's needs, particularly in the beginning, particularly in terms of material needs. We managed the donations that came in, which were absolutely amazing. They came from all over the country. People came in needing everything, so we managed all that and then six months later we moved into town. In Cobargo, there was still a huge need for people needing support in all types of things. They still needed material support, but they needed help in finding where to go to get assistance from government and other agencies, so we were able to help them with that. We built up a lot of contacts and liaised with a lot of other agencies so that we were able to direct people to help. And from that grew a broader service to help people, sourcing and receiving help from services. There wasn't anything on the north, in the north of the shire, that was able to do that. So we grew into the access centre and that was four and a half years ago. It's grown very organically. We set about making contacts and getting to know who does what in the Bega Valley. We've had a lot of support from organisations like Red Cross, foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal, Anglicare, Salvation Army Services, New South Wales. Yeah, I think it's just a matter of keeping in touch with everybody and sharing knowledge and ideas. [00:07:45] Speaker D: The last few years we've been auspicing organisations and that has been really, really successful. Auspicing means that a group can come to us and get the governance type support to realise their project. And that means we will cover them for insurance, we will induct their volunteers, we will help them with grant applications and the acquittals, we'll support them with the budgeting. They come under our insurance policy. They don't have to have our accounting software. I provide that. I also provide them with the support to apply for grants. An example of that would be the Eden Lap It Up Club, where we supported them to get some steps to go into the Eden swimming pool. Although that sounds like a very small project and it probably was in terms of money, it was around about $7,000 worth. But what it's meant is that people with limited mobility especially, but basically everybody has a safer way of getting into the Eden Swimming pool. And that's meant that all sorts of people, people with disabilities, people with young ones, can just walk down steps and get into the pool and also get back out of the pool. An example of a larger project that we auspiced was the Eden Trails project And that's been 58 kilometres of mountain bike trail. That was a four and a half million dollar project and we were basically the project managers for that development. [00:09:20] Speaker B: That left the club, that's Eden Mountain Bike Club. [00:09:23] Speaker D: Bike Club, to do the day to day things and in the background we made sure all the bills were paid, we made sure we had a good budget, we made sure that all the reporting to the government departments was done on a regular basis. We had input into who the contractors would be. It was a really beneficial way of supporting a local project. Yeah, it's a great way to help your community. [00:09:56] Speaker E: My parents were both very heavily involved with community things and I got a lot out of it as a kid. Like I got to know a lot of people I wouldn't have normally. I got used to speaking with adults and I realised that that was a pretty big part of growing up and actually has helped me in my adult life a lot. Learning to talk to lots of different people and being comfortable in awkward situations as well. I don't really feel awkward like other people feel awkward in weird situations because I'm like, well there's not much I haven't experienced in terms of being exposed to certain scenarios and learning that nothing is black and white, that people don't end up in particular situations for clear reasons. It's very nuanced, it's very gray and we're all connected whether we like it or not. And so I got to know those links very early on and yeah, it really helped me in my life. [00:11:05] Speaker B: Next we get a taste of the sheer breadth of work that supporting truly community led approaches can engender. It is work by the community for the community and often reaches across multiple communities. Leaders in this sector can face a steep learning curve. Community led work can also require deep humility. Working behind the scenes, pooling resources or making small actions consistently that can have an intergenerational impact. Normalising a community ethos that younger generations also run with and make their own. This is a reminder that being active in not for profits and community groups requires dedication and is often deeply skilled work. This can include high level strategic thinking, the ability to rapidly self educate in completely new fields, facilitating co design efforts or building support around overstretched communities to minimise burnout. The reflections you'll hear from Chris, Corinna and Kate are indicative of the stories we heard from across the Beggar Valley throughout the IRCF program. The program has recognised the immense value of the sector and championed them to further strengthen their efforts through investment in leadership development as an integral part of community capacity building. [00:12:19] Speaker C: One of the reasons why Cobargo has managed to achieve what it has since the bushfires, because everything that happened in Cobargo has been community led. It's easy to say, oh, the council should do something, or whatever, but there is no easy answer. I don't think. I don't think it really comes from council. It's gotta be bottom up, it's gotta be community led. It boils down to community leaders organising themselves and in turn organising the community. But we're all really tired and those of us in the community who are, if you like, leaders, and that's, you know, I don't know whether I'm a leader in the community, but because we're such a small community here in Cobargo, those of us who are doing things, we're doing lots and lots of things. Those of us who take on these roles take on more than one. So we need to find space, we need to find the drive, I suppose, to keep the community activities going so that in the future we will be able to handle disasters more readily. There has been some work in this community about that. I've been on a group of people who are working towards that, but it's very informal. We do need to formalise it a bit more as time goes on, but at the moment it's a very informal group of people. We talk to each other lots, we share our experiences, we share our feelings and we're all very open to that. Basically, we support each other by talking to each other and being kind to each other. Whenever we get together to do any community work or whatever, one of the sort of unspoken rules is we leave our egos at the door and we just look after each other. [00:14:13] Speaker D: I always think of the people that back up this organisation and they're the volunteers. So not only the volunteers are here on a daily basis providing service to our community, but the boards of management as well, that give their time freely and their expertise freely. So I'm very proud to represent what they're doing and what they want in a community. I just see myself as a bit of a mouthpiece for them. They're the people behind the scenes that are really supporting me in what I do, but also giving me the skills and the knowledge, the mentoring to do what I do. Because a lot of these things, like, I've never handled a budget of four and a half million dollars before, but when you collaborate, when you have People around you that have that expertise, it makes it really easy. And for me, I'm always learning, so it's fantastic. But I live in a great community. The Bega Valley Shire is so positive. They've got some great projects going and organizations like frrr, Mumbala, Bendigo bank, they really provide that ongoing security that we're going to keep running projects and that's what our communities need. We're going to keep doing things for our communities. And that's great because it sort of takes some weight off having to seek support elsewhere. [00:15:51] Speaker E: I know a lot of people, and the majority of people right now seem a little bit polarised and more and more so. And people don't really want to be political with their lives and they don't even want to have political conversations. And it kind of feels like a lot of people are in these silos, not for profits, offer a platform that are or should be apolitical. I mean, I can only speak for the ones that I'm part of that I know about. But like SJA, for instance, social justice advocates of the Sapphire coast, they have a very basic motto, which is what can I do? How can I help? They see need and they do something about it. They advocate, they lobby parliament, they lobby local government, they lobby at all levels for whatever injustices are brought to their attention here. Good examples of how they work with government are during the fires, people wanted to donate to this area. Bega Valley was hit particularly hard. But you can't give to council and have it be tax deductible. So council didn't have a way for donations to be tax deductible, so they teamed up with social justice advocates who are a registered charity, and they work together to handle those donations and get the money where it was needed. So that's a really good example of how not for profits can network really well, lobby government and help create change, but also answer need. [00:17:30] Speaker D: I think it's really important that your community knows what you're doing and why you're doing it, and also to become reasonably trusted in your community, which I think we are being that organisation that either supports the process or does the project. So making sure that people's ideas get a fair hearing and the support that they require to progress. And so then people come to us with ideas, they feel that they will get a good hearing and potentially they will get support for progressing their idea. Some ideas might take years and years to get to fruition. I guess it's bringing that knowledge and the support and that positivity. I guess to people when they have an idea for their area. We're as honest as we possibly can be. Positive, but honest. And it's not up to me to say yay or nay to projects or for the Eden Community Access Centre to say yay or nay. If it aligns with our mission and our objectives, then we will consider it. Of course, we don't seek to take away the power of that group or those individuals that come to us. It's a support role where we offer our knowledge and our skills to the process. [00:19:02] Speaker E: Community action is different from any type of political action. The difference is, I guess on a ground level is sometimes I'm picking up rubbish down at the Pyramizal beach basketball courts and occasionally the town team from council will be there. Now I used to work for council and sometimes I still casually work for council and the town team guys, yeah, they've only ever been males from Emmy. They've always been so grateful that I'm there picking up because they're got such a small window, they're under the pump, they've got so many different areas to cover in a short space of time and I. I'm quite at my leisure there on the weekends picking up rubbish. So they're so grateful for that and that's how we can work together. And that's the difference between community led and someone doing it as part of their job. I have the window to go that bit extra and I can stop and chat to people. There's this other thing I've heard of recently called glimmers. So there's been a lot of talk based on bushfires and natural disasters, on triggers, things that trigger us and bring up trauma. There's this thing that they're now terming glimmers, which are the opposite to triggers. Glimmers of hope, glimmers of joy. I know exactly what that means because when I drive around I used to see my old teachers and they still do it now. Robin Lyons and Doug Blair, they were teachers of mine at Eden High and they still pick up rubbish every week between Pambula and Marimbula. No fanfare, they don't document it, they're just quietly doing that. That for me fills my heart every time I see it and it's every week I see them. It just, I don't know, it gives me this little feeling of joy that I want more of. I really want to feel that when I go around the community and when I see people doing community led things or even just doing things because it's the right thing to do or it's their way to give back or even just, I don't know, going and talking to someone they might think is lonely in the street or might need help in the street. It doesn't have to be a locked in thing every week. It can be the tiniest action. It fills me with a lot of hope for the future. It fills me with a lot of joy. And I want young people growing up now to know that there's people in our community doing things just because they love our community and they love the place that we live, not because they're being paid to. I think it's just a lovely thing for people to see. [00:21:49] Speaker B: Lastly, we hear Chris, Carina and Kate's thoughts as they look forward, sometimes thinking of how the Beaker Valley is shifting as the bushfire and Covid crises dissipate. And in other ways looking at long term challenges such as intergenerational change. This includes what's needed to support community leaders and not for profits to be more sustainable and resilient, especially for those most active in driving change. [00:22:15] Speaker C: If we're talking about resilience and forward planning, there's lots of work, lots and lots and lots of work has been done in this space. Red Cross has a really good program that we may well embrace or even look at the Red Cross program and take parts of that for our community that we think is suitable. But in terms of pulling it all together and making it happen in a tiny community, it's pretty challenging. I don't know that we can really take a lesson from the closing other than the feeling that we believe we've sort of done the job in terms of what we did over the four and a half years that we were in operation. It's very much listening to people's needs and on their behalf. If we can't answer them straight away, we find out how we can find a solution to their issues. And that all comes down to again, leaving our egos at the door, being very open minded and accepting everybody, whoever they are, whatever their needs are. It's just about embracing everybody in the community and understanding that everybody has discreet needs and you can't put anybody in a box. Everybody's needs are different and accepting that, particularly in a disaster, you can't make comparisons to people's losses, you can't judge people's traumas. You have to accept people as they walk in the door. That's who they are and that's what we need to deal with. In the very beginning, for instance, we had people who'd lost absolutely everything. And they'd come in and they would need tools or household items or whatever, and we were able to either source those items or they had already been delivered. And we made sure that if we didn't have something that someone needed, we sorted out and found and found what they needed, if we possibly could. That's just the material stuff and it's obviously very important, but we also were very aware of people's mental health challenges, and that's been the case all the way along. It wasn't just something that happened in the first few weeks. So my colleague and I did a number of courses in mental health, first aid and so on and so forth. Because, remembering, neither of us are community workers, neither of us are trained in community work. We do have someone here now who is. But in the early days it was just a couple of women who wanted to help. So we had to educate ourselves, particularly in how to cope with people with mental health challenges. So that sort of grew into us becoming very aware of how to deal with people who were. Who were suffering really badly. And we were able to then refer them on to counsellors and so forth, should they need them. We learned how to fill out a DA form, we learned who to talk to in council if people had issues. We made contacts and networks with counsel and so forth. Same with services New South Wales, Same with Passport office. People's passports and birth certificates and so forth had to be renewed, all those sorts of things. So there was for us a very strong learning curve, very steep learning curve in all sorts of issues. Yeah, we did our very best to learn how to help people. [00:25:36] Speaker D: I think it's that consistency. We're consistently looking at different avenues of support and the things that we can deliver. So we don't limit what we deliver. For example, we deliver environmental programs, youth programs, disaster programs, gaming and coding programs. We try and be across as much of our community as we possibly can. We're looking at a domestic violence program at the moment. We're also looking at a music program. Trying to be as diverse as we possibly can, because a lot of these things, I have no idea about music, I have very little idea about environment. You know, the people that we bring bring along with us, they're the experts, they're the ones that we rely on. Really good example of that is via our project labs. So the project labs operate once a fortnight and they're a forum for people to come and. And get support in a group environment, in a safe environment. We share a meal. So It's a really nice environment for people to come and either support other projects or have their project aired. One of the projects that come to mind was the Disaster Preparedness guide that was produced from the Project Lab. That guide went out late last year to cover the summer period. Basically it allowed people to have a hard copy of where they could find safe places or safe havens and also reminded them about things like what to pack in an emergency, the contact details of their local ses, rfs, ambulance, all those basic type things. It was something that they could put on their fridge and use it as a bit of a reference guide. So that was hugely successful. Another thing that the Project Labs devised was a thing called Prepare to party and that was reinvigorating neighbours and streets getting together just to share a meal and to talk and to get to know each other. Originally that idea was to be disaster ready and get to know your neighbours and who they were and who needed support, who didn't need support. But it's more than that, it's more of just community coming together on a regular basis and breaking down those barriers, breaking down the neighbour's fence in a nice way, not literally. [00:28:17] Speaker E: There's so many resources, so many skills that are in this Bega Valley Shire that in little sections we need to have a way for people to be able to talk to each other. Communication is a big one and I think we're at this part of the digital age where people are in silos, people are desensitised, people are. I mean, I don't work for communications with council, but I can imagine it would be really hard right now to communicate with people. That's a challenge we all need to face together. We need consistent messaging, positive messaging, positive ways forward. We need people in the community to step up with these. Not for profits. There's so many amazing people out there, already stepped up. But if we could join forces, better use resources, better the circular economy thing that's going on, I mean, I'm no expert at it, but that's where we need to be headed. Grow your future in Biga, that social enterprise. Incredible. This is where we need to be headed. Getting young people trained up, getting them skilled, getting them networked with other not for profits, other businesses, get everyone working together, try and get everyone on the same page. Because I think we all have the same values and the same hopes for this area and natural disasters. If we've, we needed to learn, if we haven't already learned it, that sometimes it's up to us, we can't Wait for other people to come in and fix things. We need to do it ourselves. We need to work together. We've got amazing people here that we need to be supporting and we each need to be finding ways that we can contribute to our place, that we live. [00:30:10] Speaker C: For myself, I can only speak for myself on this one. It helped my recovery to help others. It was very powerful and I was very fortunate. My home was not impacted, but as a community member, I was seriously impacted, as was everybody else. But I think because I was in the position of being able to help people, that really helped me. I think that the community really appreciates and has appreciated what we've done. When we announced that we were closing, there were so many people said, oh, no, you're closing. That's really sad. You've done such a lot for the community. Thank you very much. But I think that, yes, there's still a lot going on in people's lives. And studies tell us that after a natural disaster, it takes 10 years for a community and for individuals in some cases to fully recover. Some never do fully recover. But the community has moved into another phase and we're just looking forward rather than looking back. [00:31:18] Speaker D: We operate, well, basically the whole of the Bega Valley Shire, plus Mallacoota and Genoa, so we run some outreach programs, some computer outreach programs both in Cobargo and down in Mallacoota. We're running the Bega Valley driver mentor program, L2P program that's across the Shire. We now have two vehicles, one based in Bega, one based here in Eden. We sort of consider Mallacoota as a sister town because they come here to shop and to seek services like doctors and medical and what have you. So we go down to there and of course they've approached us to provide a service down there as well. So, you know, we've provided service out to Rockton, just south of Bombala, Rocky Hall, Bemboka, Cabargo, Toowoomba, Womboin, those areas, Kaya, Berriko. We provided chicks with chainsaw courses in Bermagui as well. We've provided service all over the Shire. That's the great thing, you see. Community, which has been, especially after the fires and Covid, reasonably isolated and people sort of got used to staying home or not taking part in community events and activities. And so we've really noticed and people say to us constantly, oh, thank you so much for running that project, because it's got me out and it's reconnected me with friends and with family and with community and that chicks with Chainsaw courses. Those ladies were. They were like, you know, I feel now that I have capacity, if we get another fire, I'm ready. You know, I feel strong, I feel capable, and so that's what it's done. Whereas before, I felt vulnerable, I felt exposed, I didn't have the skills to contribute, but now they do. They feel like if I can handle a chainsaw, I can do just about anything, you know, it's not limiting. Yeah. So that's the benefit of these sort of things. It's about giving people back their independence, helping them realize that inner strength. [00:33:42] Speaker E: I'm just proud to be a connected person in this shire that is very lucky to have so many wonderful, rich relationships with so many different people and to be able to live in such a beautiful town. I'm proud to pick up rubbish wherever I am. It makes me feel better about getting to be so lucky and getting to live here. I'm very proud to teach my kids simple skills like that and to teach my kids to give back and to not just expect things to come. And that being an Australian citizen comes with rights. It does, but it also comes with responsibilities. And I'm showing them day to day how to exercise those responsibilities and how to give back and how to build community instead of divide it. [00:34:48] Speaker D: So as a part of our programs that we deliver, we always try and collect information and data about what we've done, how we've done it and what the success was and how we would change things in the future. And the disaster preparation strategy that was headed up by Jody Stewart. Dr. Jody Stewart. Jody did a lot of community consultation around what the community really seen as lacking. And those three things were identified communication, training and education and community connectedness. Now, I've read quite a few reports and it's just reflected in all those reports, you know, in some regard. And I think as a community organisation, we owe it to not only collect that data, but make sure that our local council, our state government and our federal government are also all held to account. You know, they need to be working on these three really big issues. [00:35:59] Speaker E: With sja. They were very aware that there was an ageing workforce and they thought, oh, wouldn't it be great to have a younger division? And Wendy Waite, who's one of the SJA members, she runs Forces of Nature, which is a subgroup concentrating on the environment and the climate crisis she put together. There was some incredible young people doing amazing work. She asked them would they be interested in forming a group. They said, yes. She set an example. She showed them how to do it. SJO really took them under their wing and that young group now has just rebranded so that they can cover more than just the climate crisis and are now addressing other issues like male violence, homelessness, lots of issues that are very close to their heart. And they've all just been incredible, those young people. I mean I haven't met all of them, but I just look at the work they do and they've all started picking up rubbish now too regularly. These gestures that you do don't have to be grandiose. [00:37:10] Speaker B: Thank you so much for listening to Stepping up at Beaker Valley Shire Council Podcast Production. Stay tuned for our final episode Regenerate, where we zoom out and look at the bigger picture in relation to creating a more sustainable future for the community sector and the whole far south coast region. We'll explore ideas around disaster preparedness, food security and shared resources led by remarkable and passionate individuals who step up. You can find us on wherever you find your podcasts. A huge thanks to Chris Walters, Corinna Severs and Kate Liston Mills. [00:38:00] Speaker F: This podcast is part of the Bega Valley Investing in Rural Community Futures program, a partnership between Bega Valley Shire Council, the Foundation for Rural and Regional Rural Renewal and the Australian Rural Leadership Foundation. The partnership highlights the importance of networking and collaboration and it supports the capability of not for Profits in the Bega Valley to recover and thrive in the face of disruption. A full list of links and resources can be found in our show. Notes the music you heard was as We Make We Mend by Dean Gray and Anna Martin-Scrase from the Wolumla School of Music. We'd also like to thank Bree Morgan for for her beautiful welcome to country project Lead Leah Santo Scripting Shona Hawkes Principal Recording, Audio production and editing and sound design by Craig Garrett. The IRCF is a place based capacity building initiative for charitable not for profit organisations in rural, regional and remote Australia. It's delivered by the FRRR with the support of trust based donor partnerships. The IRCF program provides flexible, longer term support, funding and investment in people to build more confident, collaborative, resilient and sustainable communities. This project received grant funding from the Australian Federal Government.