Neighbourhood Centre turns 40

THE Ballarat Neighbourhood Centre celebrated forty years in operation offering community support last Friday.

To mark the significant anniversary, the Centre invited a variety of staff, volunteers, and clients along to share their stories over a slice of cake.

In addition to the festivities the Centre’s Literacy Through Art mural was unveiled and the CEO of Neighbour Houses Victoria Nicole

Battle spoke to attendees.

“It’s exciting to be able to celebrate this Neighbourhood House that originated in 1981 and how far it has come over the years,” committee chair Glen Crompton said.

“It’s an honour to be able work with the fringes of our community, people with significant disadvantages, and seeing those people engage, take opportunities and achieve is pretty inspiring.

“One of our strengths is the way that the community interacts with the centre to determine what the programs will be moving forward and I think while we’re responsive to those needs, we are where we should be.”

With new programs and community consultation constantly under way community development officer Kate Owen said Centre aims to allow people the space to connect, participate and learn at a community level, through adult education and work.

“It’s been a long and winding road to be able to get where we are at the moment, the organisation started off as a childcare facility and has developed in a lot of different ways over time,” she said.

“One of the major programs that we have which is different to a lot of the other Neighbourhood Centres is that we have the work and learning centre, a voluntary program for people to get coaching and assistance when looking for work.

“We also run the Our Kitchen Social Enterprise, through that we run cooking classes and hospitality lessons as well as providing meals, it’s had a huge impact to the people of Ballarat.”

In addition to the work and learning centre and the social enterprise work, at the core of the centre is the adult education programs.

“Part of our program also includes people that come from a non-English speaking background, newly arrived migrants and refugees,” Ms Owen said.

“For the adult education in 2019 there was 33 different courses, 464 enrolments and 15,137 student hours, we excel and have very high figures in the number of pre-accredited courses that we provide.

“We also conduct community development, so we work across many areas particularly in Ballarat South but more broadly across Ballarat being involved in a variety of community events.”

Although the demand for the centre’s various programs is ever present, Mr Crompton said the centre is still notoriously underfunded due to the lack of education.

“Although we do have strong relationships with our State and Federal members, the hardest thing is getting people to understand what a neighbourhood house is, then convincing them to fund it,” he said.

“What I would like to see would be broader understanding of what we do, where we fit and not just for our clientele and volunteers but for the corporate community too who might like to help.

“The appetite is absolutely there but the profiling just isn’t up to scratch because there’s a part for everybody to play.”