If you came to our last morning tea Kalimna may have sent you home with a home cooked meal. We’ve been contemplating how we can reinvent community lunch 🥙 in corona times.

We had some potatoes kindly donated by Gordon Jones Potatoes 🥔 that came our way via Miranda at Melbourne Farmers Markets that we used to make potato and leek soup.

We’ve got lots of young families in our playgroups and older people who live alone, or care for others (and all those in between) who appreciate a meal cooked by someone else every now and then.

Following this, last week I had an inspiring conversation with Miranda and a bunch of lovely people from Cultivating Community - in relation to possibilities around ongoing community food provision.

Cultivating Community is an organisation that ‘runs food and gardening programs to lay the foundations for healthy communities’. They support public housing tenants across a number of sites to build and maintain community gardens, they provide education experiences through their school food garden program and run workshops on all sorts of garden related things.

And they are increasingly hanging out in the ‘hood with Carys on site four days a week at Alphington Community Farmgate building up the productivity 🥕🥦🥬🍅 of the gardens down there.

Our meeting was looking at how we can collaborate on a regular basis in our immediate neighbourhood to use and distribute some of the produce grown by them, or sourced by Miranda from the producers at the market.

It is really a privilege to work with such creative, go-getting, caring, community minded people!

I’ll update you on the progress as we develop the plan. Happy times.

I’m looking forward to:

• More sunshine ☀️ - the weekend was pretty great!

• Our short courses starting (Women in the Shed with Maylei, Woodworking Projects with Dave and Drawing with Louisa are all kicking off this week).

• Arty Gardening on Friday … parents and kids, oldies and youngies … and anyone in between who enjoys creative outdoorsy activities is welcome to join Katrina in the garden and/or shed from 10.30am. This week we’ll be decorating and filling seed packets. Then why not stay for morning tea (at 11.30am with Kalimna).

• Our new play equipment arriving - finally. Lockdown delayed things a little, but we have a new cubby and sandpit now arriving (fingers crossed) on Wednesday. They’re going to be pretty gorgeous we think! Pop past later in the week for a play.

• Catching up with more of you! I did see lots of people last week and catch up on their news, but I was sick on Friday and missed seeing all our regular Friday friends. Hopefully this week!

Pods collected for nature play - in the garden on Wednesday (Playtime in the Garden) and Friday (Arty Gardening) mornings. There are activities on every weekday morning at ACC for young families.

Over the next two weeks we’ll be working hard to accurately document all our conversations and interactions (the numbers NOT the details!) along with how and when ACC is open, for whom, how many people are attending formal programs onsite and at other sites in the neighbourhood, and how many are using our more informal community services … like the book library, the seats out on the corner, the gardens, dropping food off for Andy to take to ASRC etc. etc.

All this information will be fed into a survey run by NHVic (our peak body) that will aggregate data across the State to provide the Victorian Government with a snapshot of how their $$ investment in the neighbourhood house sector is being used, the leverage they are getting from the investment and the direct and indirect value being generated at the grassroots community level by neighbourhood houses.

We’ll also get a report back providing us with a $$ value around our service provision. I’ll share it when it comes in.

It is quite interesting to understand how economists are starting to put a figure on our types of organisations (that deliver soft services which have traditionally been undervalued or completely non-valued externalities in economic terms).

I would note that as the model is still being developed, some of our service provision is still falling through the cracks … it’s easy enough to put a $$ figure on community lunch (in terms of the value of a meal provided) … harder to put a $$ figure on a conversation about local kinders and how the system works, for someone new to Australia, or to assign true value to the individual and community benefit from someone on our staff taking the time to listen and care about a local feeling down and/or lonely.

But anyway, it’s great that they’re trying. And we’ll be doing our best to accurately capture all the things that happen at, and that are associated with ACC over the next couple of weeks!

Local Gabe Freeman is the next artist to feature in Alphington Neighbourhood Gallery, the paste up gallery on the fence at Alphington Community Centre.

We’ll be launching her works this Friday (16 July) at 11.30am at Morning Tea on the Corner. Come along for coffee, cake, a chat … and help us support local artists and celebrate our creative and vibrant community oriented neighbourhood all at the same time.

You can find out more about Gabe here. And get a sneak peak at her work. Or check her out on Instagram here.

Also, we have some beautiful giclee prints in our office for $85 and cards for $5. Pop in anytime we’re open.

We’re back on Monday 12 July raring to go for Term 3 after 2 weeks of school holidays.

And we’re looking forward to rolling out some new programs including:

• Arty Gardening - Friday mornings $5 for crafty fun in the garden and shed. Katrina will be here to set up a series of weekly activities. suitable for young families and people of all ages and abilities.

• CLAG (collage) - Join Kristian for a 6 week collage workshop in the evenings. Cut, paste and create. Work on individual or shared projects. Explore collage artists and all the possibilities. Suitable for beginners to more experienced artists.

• Woodworking Projects - Dave’s back in the shed. Join him for a 4 week workshop where you’ll have the chance to get his help and advice as you work on a project of your choice.

Interested? You can check out our full program here. And book in here.