Living in Harmony Community Grants 1999

Background to LIH 1 Grant Summaries

Methods used in summaries

  • Summaries have been drawn directly from organisation's reports (both interim and final) - ie they reflect the organisations', not DIMIA's, views of the success of outcomes.

  • Similarly, objectives are as stated by the organisation in contracts and/or in reports. In some cases this means that aims and "process goals" are mingled together - but the intention is clear.

  • The original language of the final reports is used wherever possible, but much has had to be shortened/edited for the summaries. (The spelling of Koori/Koorie is as used by the organisations themselves.)

  • Background notes on projects are included only where necessary, ie where an organisation's connection with its project may not be immediately obvious.

  • As nearly all projects had:

    • media exposure

    • Harmony Day activities

    • launches

    which were more for the overall promotion of the LIH program than integral to the grant project, these have only been included in the summaries when there was some highly significant element.

"Outcomes" in the Summaries

  • General outcomes include the broad-scale project impacts on organisations, clienteles, or communities (as distinct to those explicitly linked with projects' specific aims). They are presented in terms of:

    • their community development value

    • social change potential

    • projects' contributions to uniting and strengthening communities.

    • the "ripple effect" of Living in Harmony exposure as projects made contact with many additional organisations - one of the program's most notable and valuable features.

  • Outcomes include items where the project went beyond what was required by the contract, such as:

    • organisations broadening their overall mission/scope as a result of the project

    • unexpected additional effects of projects, seen as bonuses by the organisations

    • results from surveys, questionnaires and other evaluations

    • recommendations

    • honours, awards or prizes for projects

    • attracting extra funding from other organisations (especially local or state government) to extend and/or replicate project

    • strong interest from other bodies to replicate projects

    • decisions to extend the LIH project with own/other funding

    • links and networks formed with other bodies, strengthening overall community development

    • changes in clients' attitudes/actions quite beyond expectation

    • occasional examples of strategies not working, and why.

Overall reach of the total LIH program

  • Many projects spread to many towns/suburbs, and covered a geographic area far greater than that indicated by their place of origin as given in the title - nearly 50 cities/towns were the primary sites of projects, and outreach activities reached 100 more regional areas.

  • Similarly, in some cases, organisations represented on project steering committees are included to demonstrate the wide range of expertise recruited.

General comment on grants projects

  • It is noteworthy that such a wide range of diverse organisations came up with practical applications of LIH themes to the activities of their own mainstream and even specialist programs

  • The projects as a whole developed such productive networks and connections to other organisations, eg:

    • universities

    • TAFES

    • colleges

    • schools

    • Councils

    • State governments

    • Australia Council

    • Community Aid Abroad

    • churches

    • other community groups

  • The program overall certainly confirmed that the management of social change in such projects is very complex.

Keys to success

  • The grant reports indicate that overall, powerful keys to LIH projects' success are to:
    • make contact with a very large range of organisations in the locality, to add breadth and depth to the project
    • engage the whole of the community as much as possible
    • generate as much publicity as possible, including "word of mouth" recommendations, to get people involved.

Purpose

  • These notes are largely to:

    • help other community organisations determine whether they wish to run similar programs

    • provide a guide to what they might expect during the life of the project

    • indicate whether any work has already been done in an area

  • DIMIA hopes that the grants project descriptions will help government policy planners and grants administrators, community workers, teachers, lecturers, students, researchers and all others in the community development field.

| Full grants index | New South Wales | Victoria | Queensland | South Australia | Western Australia | Tasmania | Northern Territory | Australian Capital Territory |

Next: Living in Harmony initiative - full grants index
Previous: Living in Harmony initiative - community grants