New plan to help Bridgetown volunteer groups band together better

Bridgetown volunteers will have the opportunity to enhance relationships between community groups, with a new series of events to create a community action plan. Activate 2024 will be hosted in the town with free workshops for community groups to help form the new plan, set to be led by Rural Aid. Rural Aid’s community development program aims to create sustainable and positive changes, and to improve economic growth and community synergy in small rural towns. Bridgetown Hub centre manager Jenni Oliver said the series would bring community groups together to help create a plan to “work smarter, not harder”. “We’ve found . . . there’s lots of community groups in town, and they all do a fabulous job, but it’s often the same volunteers and all the same committees,” she said. “There’s 30-40 community groups in town, which is a large number. “They’re starting to get a bit of fatigue and starting to wonder ‘how can we get new people into the groups and how can we better work together?’.” Ms Oliver said the week-long series was an opportunity to garner input from community groups, the business community and residents to create a sustainable plan for the town. It will bring the Bridgetown Hub, Bridgetown and Greenbushes community resource centres, the Shire of Bridgetown-Greenbushes, and Blackwood Biosecurity together to lead the project. The Activate committee includes Ms Oliver, Bridgetown CRC’s Jane Wittenoom, Marty Cable and Kaye McLennan, shire community development officer Tania Lockley, Greenbushes CRC’s Nicole Ward, and Blackwood Biosecurity’s Trish McCourt. “We’re partnering with Rural Aid, and we’re having Peter Kenyon coming, who is well known in community development,” Ms Oliver said. “He’s coming to work with us on how we can better work together as community groups and what we can do to support each other.” Rural Aid funding will be used to help develop the plan through 10 different workshops over the week, running from September 2-6. The sessions will cover how to educate and upskill community groups, as well as how to use social media, manage conflict, create event applications, and recruit and retain volunteers. Ms Oliver said a similar concept happened in 2015 for Bridgetown, but many of the actions didn’t go ahead. However, she said the five groups running this year’s series were committed, with community members and groups all welcome to attend the workshops. Bookings can be made online or through the Bridgetown Hub.