A changemaker workshop will be held in Manjimup this month to support people navigating change in the region.
The Australian Rural Leadership Foundation’s manager of learning Andrew Bryant said the two-day workshop would aim to equip people with the confidence to drive new ideas in the community and overcome setbacks.
“One of the things that we learnt from research is when people do leadership development, one of the sticking points is the ability to mobilise change in community,” he said.
“In drought, in shorter, sharper disasters, even in an international context, things are changing, and changing quite rapidly.
“Communities need to be able to adapt and sometimes get ahead of it. It’s not just a huge content download.
“We have different sections over the two days that follow a journey around approaching change.”
The workshop will review the local ecosystem to “look at change more deeply” rather than focusing only on recent events.
Mr Bryant a core ARLF ethos for the workshop was to release people from the idea of needing to “solve” long-term problems quickly.
“Sometimes, as human beings, we can be a little short-sighted and think perhaps that everything arose in the last two or three years,” he said.
“Communities have usually gone through enormous change to get where they are. If a challenge has been 50 years in the making, there’s no pressure to get it solved in the next two to three years.
He said the approach of the workshops “takes the pressure off” participants wanting to be advocates for change.
“If we’re talking about the context of the modern nation of Australia, we’ve spent 200-odd years developing that,” Mr Bryant said.
“Then if we’re talking about First Nation people’s presence, we’re talking about tens of thousands of years of presence on the continental landscape.
“If you look back over decades or centuries, we’ve evolved and changed and adapted a lot along the way.”
Over two days of learning, participants would have the opportunity to test frameworks in a controlled space before trying them in the community, he said.
The free Changemaker Workshop will be held on November 25 and 26 at the Wellness and Respite Community Centre at 1a Edwards Street, Manjimup.
https://thewest.com.au/news/manjimup-bridgetown-times/changemaker-workshop-to-mobilise-manjimup-community–c-16727624
