11. Enrich

Collaborate to enrich your hub

Two ingredients are vital for the sustainability of your hub: relationships and resources.

We’ve already highlighted the importance of both these elements in earlier sections of this guide. For example, building partnerships and getting support from volunteers can bring additional financial and human resources into your hub.

You can also collaborate with other hub leaders and services in a number of ways to enrich your hub’s activities.

What works – insights from hub leaders

  • Ask for help from your hub support coordinator if are finding it difficult to maintain the necessary records.
  • Promote your hub’s successes by regularly sharing stories and photos in school newsletters and meetings; with your support coordinator and our national support team.

Generating joint funding opportunities

In the City of Brimbank, the hub leaders and school principals work in collaboration to deliver some of their projects across all the hub sites.

With the help of the hub support coordinator, they identify grant opportunities and come up with ideas for projects that would work across the five hubs. The hub support coordinator is available to help schools with writing grant applications.

New opportunities are brought to the Hubs Principals Advisory Group meetings for discussion and endorsement. This group also decides which school will take the lead on a project and be responsible for distributing and tracking funds, overall project coordination and acquittal. The hub leader of the lead school takes on the role of project manager.

These are examples of joint points delivered through the Brimbank Community Hubs:

Sing and Grow – a music therapy program that focuses on parent-child connection, engaging targeted families with complex needs, through handson musical activities.

Connecting Isolated Women – focused on providing the opportunity for women and pre-school children to participate in hub activities such as playgroup, Mother Goose, and art workshops for parents and children.

Food Security Project – cooking and gardening workshops, and healthy eating/ nutrition information sessions. The project aimed to connect parents to the school and each other, increase awareness of nutrition and the importance of healthy eating to their children’s development and behaviour, and embed a culture of healthy eating and school and at home.