Growing Grassroot Groups
“WestSeed –Growing Grassroot Groups” was Volunteer West’s innovative project to empower community leaders to build a multicultural and mutually supportive network in Melbourne’s West.
WestSeed was three things:
Conversation, Service package, and Movement.
We met and listened to 119 community groups and facilitated group discussions. We learned that community groups want collaboration and networking opportunities to tackle common challenges.
All of us are already community assets, and we need a platform to collaborate, network, learn from each other, and pool our resources together. This project ran from March to October 2021.
Project achievements
150 map pins were added to the WestSeed Community Map
119 community groups participated in the WestSeed Project.
1:1 in-depth conversations with the 119 groups
10 blog posts published to promote community groups working towards similar goals.
69 of the community groups accessed PD Pivot, a free comprehensive service to find volunteers.
Four common topics were identified during the in-depth conversations: Legal, Grants, Events and Promotion, and Volunteers. At the workshops, the community leaders proposed collaboration and networking, an asset library and capacity building as solutions to overcome the challenges.
The Community Development Workshops facilitated 272 unique connections between 69 participants.
🌱What was the next step? WestSeed 2.0
WestSeed 2.0 was part of Volunteer West's response to this invaluable lesson.
With WestSeed 2.0, you could collaborate and network with others through...
💡 Collaborative workshops: Bring projects to collaborate with other groups. Workshop ideas however big or small, learn from each other. Every 2 months.
🎈 WestSeed Facebook Group: Network with others, ask questions, offer support, advertise your events and test your ideas.
🎠 Asset library: Working together to build an asset library that will include a template bank, list of assets to share, talent pool and a centralised place for information.