We were so pleased to meet so many members of the local community last month at the Yea Community Planning night and dinner held at the beautiful Beaufort Manor on the 16^th of May.  Over 80 community members came along and shared their dreams for Yea and heard about the possibilities of developing a local community plan.  We had delicious soup and cakes from Debs Delights and were inspired by Kat Weight about the community planning experiences of our Yarra Ranges neighbours, the Badger Creek Community Group.  We were also grateful to be able to include photos of Yea from Russell Wealands and many people enjoyed the opportunity to catch up with friends as well as meeting some new people. 

Since the Yea event, the community planning team at Murrindindi Shire Council has also launched two other community planning pilots, one in Toolangi-Castella and the other in Marysville.  We are really excited about the level of interest and enthusiasm for community planning in each of the three communities and look forward to supporting the projects as the year progresses.

A number of dreams and themes for Yea have emerged from the evening of the 16^th May, as well as the follow-up meeting held for those who indicated an interest, in early June.  One key theme emerging is a broad interest in building coordination and partnerships across the various communities and groups in Yea.  We are now in the process of compiling all of the interests and themes that arose at the dinner, and will make these available shortly on the community planning website, and to this group directly via email. 

The follow-up meetings, which are open to all community members with an interest to attend, are aimed at providing an opportunity for discussion regarding how the plan will progress.  Over 30 people attended the first follow-up meeting on the 4^th of June at the Shire Hall.  This gave us a chance to have an initial discussion about how we might progress a community plan in Yea, and the current timeline of the community planning pilot, which aims to support the identification of some priority goals for the Yea community by the end of this year.   We hope the next get together will enable us to more specifically identify some next steps and opportunities for gathering broader community input and building partnerships.  There is a great interest among community members for having a regular get together to progress the plan and associated project ideas.

The next follow-up meeting will be held at the Yea Community House, on Wednesday the 3^rd July at 6.00pm – 7.30pm.  All are welcome.  We are aiming to have the dreams and themes collected at the community planning dinner available prior to this meeting, and will also send out an agenda closer to the time.  Please let us know if you think you can make it. There will be light refreshments available.

For your information, at the Yea dinner Jaimie Porter also provided a brief update about the Respond Project in Yea, which is focussing on community led action for healthier children. For more information about this project, please contact Lee Coller, at [email protected]

Kind regards

Julie and Anna