In June 2019 HOST International launched an innovative program aimed at building thriving communities in Adelaide using a coaching approach.
At HOST we believe that it is important to measure the impact of our work and therefore each program has a clear monitoring and evaluation framework associated with it. In keeping with our focus on impact measurement we have produced a brief infographic of key achievements in our first year running this project with communities.
The aim of the Emerging Communities Incubator is to facilitate community integration of newcomers into the Adelaide community and to support the development of support networks within the local community. This is otherwise know as community capacity building.
Traditional approaches to community capacity building include delivering training, providing tools and resources and by facilitating community cultural events. However these approaches tend to expect communities to fit into pre-defined templates and limit cross cultural collaboration. We wanted to trial an approach more commonly used in the startup sector that is based on a coaching and resourcing model that seeks to build the capacity of community to self organise and to leverage existing resources better.
The project is funded by The Australian Department of Home Affairs and employs 2 part time community coaches. Our day to day work involves meeting with local community groups to understand community settlement barriers and needs and then supporting people to come together in designing and implementing solutions. We work hard to build cross cultural relationships and to ensure that settlement is not just something that ethnic communities do alone.
The data summary below shows that we are having a positive impact and that there is good engagement but there are also opportunities for further growth and development as well as opportunities to engage more mainstream community partners. If you or your organisation want to get involved in an initiative to support newcomers then please get in touch with us.