Composting for Farms Seminar

Compost Oct

Tools For When You Don’t Know The Words

Written by Bette Phillips

A series of workshops for men looking to explore the landscape of communication and personal communication styles.

This series of three workshops for men will explore the landscape of communication the workshops will focus on self awareness and the personal dialogue can influence self confidence and personal well being.

The workshop will be a continuation of the previous pilot program “Tools for dealing with grief, when you don’t want to talk about it. Participants in the pilot program showed significant interest in further workshops where the content allowed each individual to find their own sense of self.

The workshops will adopt a creative and discussion based focus in a safe and supportive environment. Participants will be encouraged to explore how their life experiences impact on communication and personal well-being.

This series of workshops is designed to encourage various strategies for helping men find “tools” that are helpful in developing understanding the broader landscape of communication skills.

When:
•Tuesday October 5th
•Tuesday October 19th
•Tuesday November 9th

Where:
•Kinglake West Uniting Church

Time:
•7pm – 9.30pm

Cost:
•No cost

Further information Bette Phillips 040 978 8883

Kinglake Football Netball Club Annual Shopping Tour

Shopping Tour Ad 2010

Community Entertainment - Kinglake West Hall

Community Entertainment Here on the Mountain.
KLW Mechanics Hall
2nd October 2010
8.00pm till 9.30pm

Following a Workshop by the Playback Theatre, they will be combining with members of the Kinglake Phoenix Singers, Whittlesea Township Choir members, Get on Stage Students and Paydirt the Musical cast to entertain you.
Playback Theatre are a Melbourne based company who bring stories to life and provide eye-opening entertainment. Join us for a evening of live and interesting music and theatre. For catering we are charging a nominal ticket price of $5. Please RSVP for tickets to Karen 57861 053 or 0408 861 645. Light supper provided to meet the stars.

Economic Strategy MSC

Economic Strategy MSC Sept

Library Yea Writers

Library Yea Sept

Fundraiser Kinglake Football Club

Fundraiser Kinglake Football for Sany Sept

Skills Development Workshop Information Session & How to Register for Workshops

FREE Skills Development Workshops Information session

Tuesday 24 August – Flowerdale Recreation Reserve
Notes taken at the session – 22 people in attendance

Welcome and Introductions – John Burgess FRC Chair

John highlighted the importance of skills training which will assist community members and committees in Flowerdale to prosper and learn new and important skills. Opportunity to have input into what is being offered and to assist in skilling up the community for the FRC transition planned for 18 December 2010. A further five sessions will be offered over the next few months with seven more sessions on offer next year to the Flowerdale community (to be negotiated based on community input).

John highlighted the fact that Flowerdale has done an amazing job in establishing and maintaining committees throughout the recovery period.

Overview - Patrick Moriarty – Our Community

Patrick gave a brief overview of possible options for training in the future – including governance, financial management, legal obligations, incorporation, volunteer support, marketing, understanding your constitution, running effective meetings, fundraising, grant writing, identifying where to get funds, attracting young people to your groups, succession planning and developing plans (e.g. fundraising plan or annual plan).

Issue Raised
• Where do you go to find out about available funds? Not sure where to even begin.
• Need to know what you are committing your group to before you apply for funds – e.g. reporting requirements, acquittal process, this is especially important if a fund of $500 requires an onerous amount of work - is it worth it?
• What are the steps for changing your group’s constitution?
• People in the community have been over consulted – all consulted out and sick of meetings – how can we sell community skills training sessions to an exhausted community?
• How do we set up guidelines for our group that truly work for us not against us?
• How do you escalate issues of concern to a community?
• How do we let funding bodies know when we are not happy with process?
• How can we save time on preparing funding submissions? Can we utilise local examples as a template to share?
• How can we improve on communicating effectively with each other (as committees) and look at skills required in active listening so that we can hear all community voices.
• How can we best share our collective wisdom and the lessons learnt by individuals and groups?
• How do we know what our responsibilities are in relation to specific model rules etc.?
• Would be good to focus on strategies for dealing with conflict and aggressive behaviours
• How can we evaluate our effectiveness?
• How can we work more effectively together? Is there really a need for 16 community groups across Flowerdale or could we consider a community cooperative? (Refer to Rein’s email below)
• Need to ensure people have proper induction process before committing themselves to roles and responsibilities within their community
• Is there a need to develop policies or understandings within groups that people only stay on committees for a short time frame – so people don’t stay on too long and become tired and stale?
• Strategies for ensuring respect and trust are maintained within communities.
• Desire to have the same facilitator at all Flowerdale sessions if possible as the community craves continuity and working with facilitators that have been accepted within the community (example of a facilitator who evoked community anger rather than participation was given).
• How do we sustain ourselves in the future?
• What does good succession planning look like?

People in attendance agreed that the information session had allowed for good open communication and agreed to promote the sessions more broadly within the community.

An email was circulated by Rein Kamar the day after the information sessions and has been added as a footnote.

Volunteer Co-operative?
At the Skills development Workshops Info Session held at the Spring Valley Rec Reserve on 24/08/10, a concept of something that, for want of a better term at the time, was referred to as a “Community Parliament” was raised. There was much excitement and enthusiasm about such a concept. However, having raised the concept in the first place, I am concerned that perhaps the idea is not properly understood. There was little time to flesh it out. Also, the unfortunate use of the term “parliament” has undesirable connotations.
All that I was suggesting is a process by which community volunteers and community committees can function effectively and efficiently through ongoing co-operation, training, communication and resource sharing – better referred to as something like a “King Parrot Volunteers Co-Operative”. In my opinion, any process has to be, and more importantly be perceived as, totally apolitical and non-hierarchical. The idea is definitely not to replace existing community committees, nor to place them under any sort of hierarchical umbrella organisation.
I believe for a “KPVC” to succeed and be inclusive of, and of full value to, the whole community it is vital that:
• It is not constituted as any sort of political or overseeing committee with its own office bearers, although a central contact/process/web site or whatever needs to be defined through which information can be disseminated outside of a regular meeting cycle.
• It must be purely a process through which individual community committees can get together to share progress, problems, training, experiences and strengths and thus understand one another and learn from one another. To share resources if such sharing is of benefit. To combine resources where appropriate.
• Meetings held under the banner of a KPVC must be regular (Twice a year? Once a quarter?) with the date, time and place of the next meeting defined at each meeting and widely advertised.
• It should be possible for special meetings/functions to be requested by community through a central contact/process/web site.
• Meetings must be open to all members of the community, not just those who belong to a committee. The KPVC is for all community volunteers….not just community committee members.
• Meetings under the banner of a KPVC must be chaired by someone totally independent, preferably not from the immediate community, and with no membership of any of the committees which attend or send delegates. Someone from MSC? Or another organisation (without clap sticks!). Failing that, meetings could be chaired by community volunteers or committee members on a rotational basis, but the chairperson must not be a member of a committee which has a particular issue to raise/resolve at the meeting.
• It is not to be, nor can it even be perceived to be, another incarnation of the Flowerdale Recovery Committee. While we all recognise that the FRC has done fantastic work, rightly or wrongly, for real or perceived reasons, the FRC is not seen as an all-inclusive body throughout the entire community.

A “King Parrot Volunteers Co-Operative” (call it what you want), must be something new and fresh, open to all, and non-decision making in itself. A co-operative helping to provide participants with the tools, knowledge and experience to make the best decisions for themselves. All rather utopian…but as I said last night…if we can get a workable Federal Government out of the current situation, then surely this community can make this work!
Rein

Not too late to register for Skills Workshops see detail below:
Skills Development Workshops

2010 Earth Building Conference - Eltham

The 2010 Earth Building Conference is on!
17th – 19th September 2010, Eltham Victoria.

Packed with excellent speakers and information on:
• Thermal Mass versus Insulation
• Bush fire bunkers and fire resistant house designs using earth
• Carbon Pollution & Role of the Built Environment in Addressing Climate Change
• Affordable housing using Earth Building Techniques
• Appropriate Climate Responsive Design with Earth
• Earth Building Workshops

The Earth Building Association of Australia (EBAA) is an organisation formed to promote the use of Unfired Earth as a building medium throughout Australia.
See the website: www.ebaa.asn.au

At such a critical time in our history, with the future of the planet at stake, and carbon reduction & options for sustainable living are at the forefront of consciousness across the world, this conference provides an opportunity to really engage with the philosophy, the practice, and the ‘hands on’ of earth building - the safest and most sustainable option available for building and community living.
EBAA Conference Program 2010_1 Sept
EBAA Conference 2010 Speakers Sept
EBAA Conference Registration Form 2010 Sept

Work Begins at Community Hall

It is really pleasing to see that work has begun on another construction project in Flowerdale. A Hall upgrade was part of the Community Recovery Plan and it has taken a while to get going but shovels have hit the dirt.

The project includes refurbishment of the existing hall, some extra building space at the rear of the Hall, a playground and BBQ area as well as some landscaping around the hall. The Hall upgrade was one of the projects identified at the original Flowerdale Forum and was included in the Community Recovery Plan.

See the pics below which aren't much to look at but will serve as part of the record of where it started and for those wanting to monitor progress.

Early Learning Hub really coming along

It has been a couple of weeks since I posted some pics of the new Early Learning Hub and things are really moving along.

The building has really taken shape and the internal walls are up and the plaster has been delivered and looks ready to be put up.

Here are the latest pics:

Plenty of Rain as the Creek Runs Wild

It is well documented just how much rain has fallen over winter and the weekend saw floods hit across Victoria.

There is certainly plenty of water in the dams around town and all the little creeks were running. The King Parrot Creek was flowing fast and rose close to minor flood levels on Saturday evening. At this stage things are OK.

The pics below show just how much the river was flowing.



The creek is running fast after plenty of rain during the week




The water lapping up to the edge of the Moores Rd Reserve