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Annual Report
Townsville, Queensland
Changing Lives, Changing Communities
Starting a revolution
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Changing Lives, Changing Communities
QCOSS believes that it is vital communities have a say in decisions that affect them at local and system-wide levels, and that community leadership and solutions reflect the diversity of each community.
To achieve this, place-based work continues to be a focus for QCOSS - strengthening connections with community members and other stakeholders, particularly in regional Queensland, and developing a better understanding of the community sector’s challenges and opportunities.
What will it take to create a community where everyone contributes, matters, and belongs?
In communities right across Queensland during Changing Lives, Changing Communities - a series of two-day forums held in communities from Cairns to Toowoomba – we asked the question, “What will it take to create a community where everyone contributes, matters and belongs?”. The events helped community members build stronger networks and develop greater community capacity for change and ownership at a local level.
Held in partnership with Queenslanders with Disability Network and the Queensland Human Rights Commission, round two of Changing Lives, Changing Communities continued this work in nine communities before the coronavirus pandemic forced a premature end to the project in March 2020.
Mount Isa
12-13 November 2019
Cairns
11-12 March 2020
Townsville
26-27 November 2019
Mackay
9-10 October 2019
Capricornia
22-23 October 2019
Fraser Coast
30-31 October 2019
Toowoomba
3-4 September 2019
Brisbane
3-4 March 2020
Caboolture
3-4 December 2019
We brought citizens, community organisations, the private sector, and government representatives together to build hope and optimism through engaged, inclusive and thriving communities.
In round two, friends, colleagues and neighbours came together to take their place, identify shortfalls in community capacity, and learn how to lay the groundwork to drive real change in their communities while ensuring that everyone could be included in community development.
The participatory tools taught at the events were designed to empower participants to create local solutions and ensure residents are able to access what they need – like a place to call home, good health, a way to get around, education, and real jobs.
Our Queensland place-based community of practice builds on this work, with more than 300 members sharing ideas, resources, and information through regular events, web conferences and online learning.
As people and organisations seek to reconnect in meaningful and deliberate ways, ensuring communities can bounce forward from the pandemic, lived and local experiences are being harnessed to build collective responses to the social and economic challenges of COVID-19.
Special thanks to our main project partners:
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