The Maribyrnong People Participation Strategy is underpinned by a community development and social justice framework that respects diversity, equity, people, place, and planet, and is guided by the following principles:

Collaborative

We build partnerships and networks that foster strong connections and supporting structures to enable knowledge and skills sharing. We provide the infrastructure backbone that supports ecosystems of participation to flourish.

Adaptable

We are responsive, adapting to the needs of the community, recognising that they are seeking more meaningful roles with greater flexibility and that participation happens across a spectrum and takes many forms.

Empowering

We support place-based, community-led, and co-designed programs that cultivate a sense of reciprocity where community members influence decisions and pursue opportunities that align with their aspirations, ideas, capacity, and capabilities. We support opportunities for participation that are built around people not institutions.

Championing

We champion and celebrate the skills, expertise, and wisdom of our community, their strengths, aspirations, and the value of their contributions. We communicate, promote, and celebrate all forms of participation, raising awareness and acknowledging that voluntary actions take many forms.

Inclusive

We work with everyone and put intercultural and intergenerational perspectives at the heart of what we do. We work to remove barriers to particiatpion, to ensure opportunities are accessible and available to all in our diverse community. We support and encourage practices and opportunities that are inclusive, accessible, culturally aware, and safe.

Informal Volunteering

Time willingly for the common good without financial gain, given outside an organisational setting.

Micro-volunteering

Easy, 'bite-sized' activities that can be done anywhere, anytime, on an individual's own terms. E.g. counting birds in your garden for a research project, participating in a community clean-up day or weeding a community garden.

Virtual volunteering

Activities that take place in whole or part online. E.g. singing an online petition, sharing a cause on social media.

Episodic volunteering

Activities that are periodic or on a recurring basis, rather than ongoing. E.g. volunteering for a community planting day, to support a one-off community event, to participate and share expertise for a programmed activity.

Formal volunteering

Time willingly given for the common good without financial gain. Usually within an organisation and in a formal, ongoing role. E.g. volunteering for an organisation, club, or group. Usually involves a level of structure and management.

Corporate/workplace volunteering

Includes activities where an organsiation supports staff to give their time, skills or support to another organisation during work or paid hours.

Community leadership

Attached to Council's Community Leadership programs, participants are enabled to pursue place-based projects that align with their aspirations and interests within an overarching theme. Strong connections with pathways into local leadership roles, and development of social enterprise.

Civic participation / active participation / participatory democracy

Where individuals participate in government decision making. Sometimes described as 'invited spaces' where community is asked to provide input or help make a decision but are not ultimately in control of the agenda. Can be instrumental in building trust and empowerment. E.g. being part of an advisory group, attending a Council meeting, participating in community engagement.

Acting in mutual support

Where individuals support each other outside structures of volunteering. E.g. helping a neighbour, friend, or family member, or helping a stranger.

Getting involved

Participating in group activities that help bring communities together. E.g. playing a team sport, being part of a band, being in a book club, or speaking up about a social issue.

Campaigning

Online or offline acitvities to mobilise support for a social, environmental, or political aim.

Activism

Online or offline effrorts to promote, direct, impede or intervene in social, political, or enviornmental reform.

Building capacity

• Enable place-based, community-led approaches.
• Support co-designed and collaborative opportunities that are flexible and adaptable.
• Support and implement asset-based community development approaches.
• Support the community to address local needs and self-organise.
• Recognition that pathways to participation are not equal. Work to remove barriers to participation.
• Recognise and invest in our community leaders.
• Engage harder to reach groups (First Nations communities, CALD groups, young people, people with disability) and address and remove barriers to participation.
• Encourage practices and opportunities that are inclusive, accessible, culturally aware, and safe.
• Design opportunities around people not institutions.
• Boost the volunteering sector through capacity building activities in partnership with peak bodies, other levels of government, the community, and private sectors.
• Be a champion for change.
• Support VIO's through training, council officer and in-kind support.
• Support VIO's to match opportunities to new technologies.

Foster an ecosystem

• Strengthen networks and partnerships with the community and volunteer sector.
• Link the work of the Maribyrnong People Participation Strategy across Council departments to avoid siloing and increase collaboration.
• Leverage Council's extensive connections and comprehensive understanding of local communities.
• Provide access to Council facilities e.g. indoor spaces within Council facilities (community centres, libraries) and outdoor spaces (community gardens) to create informal volunteering and participation opportunities.

Communication, promotion, and celebration

• Share information and opportunities to participate.
• Communicate, promote and celebrate all types of participation, the informal and formal.
• Recognise and value the skill and expertise in the community.
• Recognition, promotion, and celebration to raise the profiles of these who participate and the contribution they make to the community.

Knowledge sharing and evaluation

• Undertake deeper localised research into formal volunteering in Maribyrnong.
• Monitor how key principles and new practices are embedded.
• Act as a central point for knowledge sharing in collaboration with VIO's and VRC's.

Community Leadership programming

The Community Leadership Programming is an essential part of supporting a participation ecosystem. It supports place-based, community-led actions and allows community members to build competencies and a sense of agency around matters that are important to them.

Community Grants programming

Enact the four interlinks actions as per the recommended actions of the Community Grants program redesign:

• Embed community grant making into a community development approach.
• Integrate community grant making into the broader suite of support that is offered to community organisations.
• Develop an outcomes focused approach to community grant making with an explicit focus on identified organisational priorities.
• Utilise online platforms more effectively to streamline process and centralise administration.

Building resilience

With the climate emergency the issue of our age, and the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to effect communities locally and globally, better supporting a diversity of participation is key in helping the volunteer sector and communtiy to build resilience and prepardness for the challenges ahead.

A safe climate and healthy enviornment is one of Council's key objectives in the Council Plan 2021-25, pledging to work with our community to respond to climate emergency challenges. Community members, volunteers and community leaders will all be an essential part of the solution.

Council must act as the capacity builder and connector to support diverse ecosystems of particpation that enable agility, adaptability, and innovation.