Thanks so much to everyone who came along to our Annual General Meeting a week and a bit ago.

It was lovely to look back at what we achieved over the last year.

A special thanks to Kathy Vrettas from Yarra Council for attending. She provides wonderful support to all the Yarra neighbourhood houses on behalf of Council. It was also lovely that Cr Amanda Stone could attend, also from Yarra.

We really did achieve a lot in the last year. And we couldn’t do it without a super team of people.

Kalimna keeps so many things ticking along behind the scenes, Suzanne has amazing grant writing and management skills, Lee is super creative, Jill is such a kindhearted and knowledgeable CD worker, Maylei runs a fabulous Women in the Shed program and both Katrina and now Clare have really improved our community engagement through our garden spaces in the last year (and the gardens themselves).

We also have a very supportive Committee of Governance and I’d like to thank Heather as Chair, Anne as Secretary and Michelle as Treasurer this year. Thanks also to Jane as a general member. This year we welcomed Wendy and Ina mid-term. It is great to have an injection of new skills and ideas at the strategic level. I would also like to thank Kate - who is hanging up her hat after 3-4 years …I hope you have a lovely time with your exciting new endeavours!

Of course, we also have so many volunteers here who help out in so many ways. From Shirley running line dancing to Phil running our computer group, to our preserves and craft group members … to those who put their hand up to coordinate the book clubs - big and small, we really appreciate all the the community connections and contributions that are at the heart of our neighbourhood house.

And then, there’s all the super workshops and projects we’ve run this year. And our partners and financial supporters … it really is amazing … you’ll HAVE to read the Annual Report. Here it is.

We’ve got a new fence project brewing - just in time for spring … It is called Still.Life - and Lee is busy painting 🖼 some amazing art for it.

Thanks once again Yarra Arts for supporting us to undertake our whacky and fabulous street art projects.

We’ll post more next week!

Rachael contacted us to share information about “Nature Connect” at the Collingwood Children's farm.  It is a program for survivors of family violence to enable them to meet up and support each other in nature.

Women can attend the farm (with young children or not) to meet other women. The group meets on Wednesdays from 10am-12pm.  Attendees have the choice of focussing on social time or undertaking volunteer tasks around the farm. This group is not facilitated as such but there are peer volunteers who are present. In addition the farm staff greet the group each week.

You can find out more about the program here.

 Thank you Rachel for sharing. We hope if anyone needs this support they find this helpful.

Over the last year the Darebin Neighbourhood House Network (us, Bridge Darebin, Jika, PRACE, Reservoir and SPAN) has been working together on a climate action and resilience plan.

It has been a super process to go through and we’ve all learnt a lot.

The hard copy documents are available here for your reading pleasure and there’s also a little animation Lee made explaining all about it. It is pretty gorgeous.

DHNHN Climate Action and Resilience Plan

Term 3 of Women in the Shed starts today - this Thursday at 10am. This program is fully booked again for this term and next - it is wonderful that we have so much consistent interest from our community!

We are also starting up our AAA Arts program on Fridays from 1pm. This course will combine painting, print making and woodwork and will be led by Clare with help from Corrado who has recently started volunteering with us on Fridays.

It is a free access all abilities program (please note that carers will need to stay and help if needed) that is kindly supported by our lovely Community Bank friends just down the road in Clifton Hill.