Community organisation boss calls time

The Venny CEO and former Kensington Neighbourhood House boss Carolyn Webster has always liked to keep busy but after 20 years at the helm of some lively local organisations she is ready for some down time.

When her kids were little Carolyn Webster took on the role of coordinating volunteer-run newspaper Flem Ken News.

“That kind of sparked my interest in the community,” she says, “because all of a sudden I got to find out about lots of different things, got to meet a lot of people.”

While she was still running the paper Carolyn was asked to join the board of the Kensington Neighbourhood House (KNH), where her daughter was attending childcare.

That led, before long, to the suggestion she apply for the manager’s job, which she took on in 2004 and would do for the next 16 years.

It was a job-share role and “quite manageable”, initially, Carolyn says.

Aside from childcare and English classes there wasn’t a lot going on in terms of programs.

“We started introducing cooking classes, and one-off workshops, just to kind of tease people in, and also started doing after-school stuff for kids and then evening programs.”

The idea was to “make money out of people that have actually got money and bring everybody together under the one roof” so that the neighbourhood house had “something for everyone”.

Current manager Bec Smith has a graph of KNH income going back to 1999.

“You can literally see when Carolyn came on board,” she says.

“She established our suite of what we call ‘fee-for-service’ programs … all the recreation and wellbeing programs, exercise classes, art workshops.”

She was really instrumental in working out that we needed diversity of funding sources, that you can't just rely on recurrent government funding because you might not get it, and that one of the beauties of having such an interesting and diverse population here in Kensington is that we can offer different things for different people.

A colourful example of what was on offer were the annual camps for Vietnamese seniors the house ran, which over the years went all over Victoria.

Many of the attendees, though once locally based had relocated permanently away when their public housing was redeveloped, and the trips were primarily about companionship, Carolyn says.

Around 80 people would get on the bus, then self-cater at the school camp-style destinations they drove to, spoiling Carolyn in the process.

“It was probably one of the easiest jobs that I did,” she says.

An important KNH contribution during her time there was a two-year project with the Kensington Management Company and in partnership with AMES to introduce new residents of the rebuilt estates to the suburb and help settle them in through place-based social activities and classes.

In 2016 a major highlight came when the neighbourhood house won "Community Education Provider of the Year" at the state government-run Victorian Training Awards.

“We were up against 300-odd community training providers, and we took out the gong,” Carolyn says.

“It was super exciting for such a small organisation to be seen to be of that quality.”

Overall, though, the real standout was “the people and connections and the great team of staff”.

“Most of us lived locally, and most of them are still there and I think that works well in a small organisation.

“There’s nowhere to hide!” Carolyn says, laughing. “But it also creates that passion.”

Starting at The Venny, where she became CEO in March 2025 after a couple of years of occasional voluntary work, it had been “lovely” to see a lot of the same families she got to know at KNH.

“I've worked in a few other different communities, but nothing has ever been quite as special as Kensington,” she says.

“Everybody's so connected, and just really looks out for each other.”

The Venny’s board recently acknowledged their CEO’s coming departure on social media with gratitude and sadness.

Carolyn had “overhauled the organisation’s systems and processes, created foundations that would serve the community for years to come”, and “led her team with real care and warmth,” they posted on Facebook.

Bec Smith credits her former colleague with doing the same at KNH while passing on “strong community development principles” of “listening to community and responding to needs rather than imposing things from above”.

While Carolyn has “no plans” after leaving The Venny in August beyond a four-week trip to England it is unlikely the Flemington resident will disappear from view.

“If they need somebody to come and look after the chickens on the weekend, I'll be the first person to put my hand up!” •