Our push for a community hub looks set to drag on

Our upcoming Quiz Night and Community Dinner promises to be a grand event. Bookings are coming in steadily, so by the time you read this there’s every chance we will have a full house.

For the record the event will kick off with a pizza and pasta dinner at the Reggio Calabria Club at 6.30 pm on Thursday 25 June, followed by lots of fun, courtesy of Funky Bunch Trivia.

The event is funded by the City of Melbourne in the interests of community connection, inclusion and empowerment. Food and entertainment costs are covered, while drinks are available for purchase. It will be a great night together.

Leaving time for the excitement to die down, our next event will be tricks and treats for the local kids at Halloween. We had to give that a miss last year, so fingers crossed and weather permitting it will go ahead this year. After that we have a mystery event scheduled for November and our AGM.

Looking even further ahead, we will be celebrating Harmony Day with a community festival in March next year, thanks to a generous grant from Greater Western Water for which we are most grateful.

We have one more iron in the funding fire, but it may be another few months before we learn the outcome. The Commonwealth Department of Social Services administers grants for volunteers via its Community Grants Hub.

Our first step was to seek endorsement from our federal MP. Happily, the member for Melbourne, Sarah Witty MP, has recommended that we receive a $1000 grant for software to assist with administration. Thanks, Sarah! Given her support, we have submitted our application for the grant to be awarded and await the result.

All in all, we’re doing our best to serve the community and foster a strong sense of belonging, pride, co-responsibility, safety and cohesion in Parkville Gardens.

One factor that limits our ability to do this is the lack of a community centre of any kind. The one that was promised at the time of the 2006 Commonwealth Games never eventuated.

Twenty years later we were heartened to see in the City of Melbourne’s Community Infrastructure Plan a recognition that north-west Parkville “is less connected to the rest of the municipality and lacks flexible, bookable community spaces” and that consideration should be given to “the need for a community hub in north-west Parkville to provide access to programs and services, including flexible community, health and wellbeing spaces.”

In view of this, the plan recommends advocating “to the Victorian Government to deliver additional community spaces [and] an uplift in social housing provision …” The plan was set to be endorsed by the council at its meeting on Tuesday, June 16. It’s fair to assume that a council resolution to advocate with the state government is not going to produce concrete outcomes in the short term.

Sadly, it would appear that our dream of a community hub is not about to be realised anytime soon. •