Rural Support Workers Program

Chicks with Chainsaws

Chicks with Chainsaws empowered women throughout the Shire to be confident and independent in bush settings. The two-day training course provided that confidence in the safe handling of machinery for property maintenance and in emergency situations. Chicks with Chainsaws is an initiative of the Eden Community Access Centre’s Rural Support Workers Project, delivered by Walan Miya and funded through Smart and Skilled NSW. Be sure to express interest if this course is relevant to your needs.

10×10 project

An ongoing project that stems from the activities of the newly formed Cobargo Community Garden. Participants learn how to sustain a small productive home garden. Demonstrations of skills and the sharing of information takes place at the Cobargo Community Garden and is led by a local commercial market gardener. During the pandemic Zoom gatherings were held. The project was initially sponsored and free to participants but has gradually evolved over four sessions to be financially sustainable, with participants paying a fee which meets tutor, materials and catering costs. 10×10 attracts a wide range of local gardeners and is a point of connection for the Cobargo community. Various side projects, initiated by 10×10 graduates, have also begun including a group that meets weekly to raise seedlings, a group that visits each other’s gardens monthly, and a new gathering called a ‘stone soup’ where gardeners and cooks come together to create seasonal and regional meals with excess produce.

50 Sheds project

This project is distinctly collaborative, a good example of the success of working together for the common good. The project was designed by the local RSW and Triangle Tool Library to help advise, subsidise and facilitate the building of sheds on properties where housing and infrastructure were impacted by the fires. Anglicare played a key partnership role, engaging with participants’ longer term master plans, demystifying planning rules, and challenging whether the proposed shed is the right solution for each individual.  The RSW project contributed a wages component to project manage the complex logistics and ensure good communication on this reciprocal model. Much work has been done to evolve the initial shed design, to keep material costs low and skillsets basic, and yet ensure the product sits well in the landscape. The recipients pay for all materials, Triangle Tool library provides a fully equipped building trailer, and over the four day build the participants receive onsite training and supervision by a qualified carpenter. Six sheds were built in 2022 with another 10 scheduled for 2023.  

Other projects

Triangle Tool Library
Other projects include support and development of the Triangle Tool Library in Cobargo which has been instrumental in providing residents with the tools and knowledge they need as they rebuild their homes and their lives. The library was successful in receiving a $134,000 BCRRF grant to build 4 “Resilience Trailers”. RSW has provided project management support to conduct community surveys on exactly which tools the community wanted and support the library in the procurement phase. This engagement led to several “user groups” forming around niche tool areas. The user groups were empowered to make decisions on how the tools were deployed and are now initiating community training workshops and service models. One food preservation user group is looking after $20,000 of commercial food processing tools and organising community gatherings where bottling and canning of local produce takes place. These gatherings connect people from remote and isolated areas who have a genuine shared interest.

Art Therapy
Art Therapists were engaged in Eden and Bega to support bushfire-affected community members who felt more comfortable expressing themselves through their art.

Creative Arts as Therapy is a continuation of that theme by allowing remote and isolated people to reconnect through music, ceramics, painting, drumming and singing and photography.  These programs were all well received with lots of great feedback from participants.

Bemboka focussed attention on developing a Red Cross sponsored Community-led Resilience Team (CRT) in 2023 and our local RSW has supported this initiative.

We support other services in the area to deliver their programs in various locations and we are always interested to hear of novel ways to support our communities.