Leaving a long legacy of support

A PILLAR of community service work in Ballarat, Kate Owen retired from the field, leaving her final position as a community development officer at the Ballarat Neighbourhood Centre staff this week.

With a rich history of community development projects both in Ballarat and globally, Ms Owen said when she started at the Neighbourhood Centre in 2013, she already had a wealth of experiences behind her.

“I’ve never worked in this sector before, I originally trained as a psych nurse and was a primary school teacher but went into community education,” she said.

“I was the first community education and liaison officer at the Breast Screening Program, then I was working as a family violence prevention networker at Child and Family Services and then did some volunteer community development programs at Timor-Leste and Darwin and started here.

“I started off part-time here and in Wendouree and over the years I worked over the two centres and for the last 18 months, I’ve been setting up the Ballarat East Neighbourhood House.”

Having contributed to a range of initiatives over the four Neighbourhood Centres in Ballarat, Ms Owen said working alongside the staff, partners and community members has been a joy and a privileged.

“Each centre and community they reflect are all different so that’s been interesting to work in two totally different spaces,” she said.

“From all of our community consultation and feedback, what everyone is after is to connect with other people in the community and to participate in community and learn new things.”

From projects including the Wendouree West Recreation Reserve redevelopment and the Centre’s community garden project, Ms Owen said most notable was the Mount Pleasant historic guide she initiated.

“We set up the Mount Pleasant History Group, and located around 20 historic sites and used the project to share the history and knowledge of Mount Pleasant with the broader community.”

“It took a great deal of time the Mount Pleasant project, we not only worked with community developing different activities but worked on a history project as well.

“That’s become noteworthy and now other different suburbs across Ballarat are hoping they can do something similar to record their unique history.”

After finishing up, Ms Owen said she’s looking forward to travelling and spending time with her family before returning to help out at the Centre wherever is needed.

“It has been a lot of fun and been a great journey over the years,” she said.