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Creating Brimbank City Council's Learning Strategy With The Brimbank Community
Project Type:
Community Engagement Project
Partners:
Brimbank City Council
Location:
Brimbank, Victoria. Australia
The city of Brimbank is a local government area located within the inner western metropolitan area of Melbourne. As a council committed to learning, the vision of Brimbank City Council’s Lifelong Learning Strategy is ‘To foster a community of lifelong learners in Brimbank by empowering people to take control of their lives, build aspirations, enhance employability and quality of life, and achieve this by working alongside partner organisations and the community.’
The current strategy was nearing the end of its life, and they asked us to facilitate community engagement workshops to enable a genuine community participation in the development of Council’s next Lifelong Learning Strategy.
"Easy to work with, delivered on promises, professional and friendly. Would work with Impacto again in a heartbeat, and have recommended Impacto to everyone :) Thank you so much, you made everything so easy.”
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Approach
Impacto Consulting designed and facilitated the engagement process in close collaboration with the Council. This engagement involved a survey and a series of workshops to gather insights and ideas from the community, including targeted outreach to specific demographics such as members of the Vietnamese community, stay-at-home parents, young people and older adults. The aim was to ensure that all participants felt comfortable and supported in sharing their experiences and perspectives with a range of interactive activities designed to support collaboration and sharing.
During the workshops, participants were given the opportunity to discuss their own experiences with learning and provide feedback on what they believed were the most important factors in creating a supportive and effective learning environment. The workshops also provided a forum for participants to share their thoughts on the existing Lifelong Learning Strategy, lifelong learning opportunities available in the Brimbank area, and to suggest areas for improvement.
There were five workshops;
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For employees at Brimbank to understand what they see as important to the community.
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Community members targeting the adult and older adult life stages
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Delivered in Vietnamese to capture the specific needs of this community
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Youth and young adult to ensure that their voice was included
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Learning partners that included a range of organisations such as schools, nearby councils, training providers, employment agencies and other support organisations
We analysed the engagement results and synthesised the findings into an actionable report for the Council. The insights from this report have informed the development of a comprehensive and inclusive Lifelong Learning strategy that addresses the unique needs and barriers different community members face. These insights will result in a more effective, responsive, and relevant strategy that caters to the needs of the Brimbank community.
“It's an opportunity to
have a voice and to share ideas!
How lucky are we to have a council that engages their community members to plan for the future!”
Outcomes
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100% of attendees of the workshops said they would recommend the session to friends family and others that live or work in Brimbank. The majority saying they would highly recommend
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We had input from 310 members of the Brimbank community, ensuring we captured the many different voices such as people from different cultural backgrounds, genders, life stages, employment status etc
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The engagement process provided the council staff with valuable insights into the perceptions and needs of the community concerning lifelong learning
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The final report made it easy for the council staff to understand the differing needs of their diverse community. We received feedback that writing the strategy has now become easy due to the concise way the information was presented back and the valuable insights the report contained about what the community needs from them