Ross put this account together for our members.....
When Russell and I sat down last Friday with their questions, we had two responses: one, to scratch our heads and say "oh, yes, now that's a good question"; the other to shake our heads and say "that question just isn't coming from the right place for us as Landcare."
It was strange to find myself
in this situation. As a facilitator of Landcare strategies, I've
been exasperated and perplexed by Landcare's preference for action over reflection. The sense I've made of this is that people
are clear enough what future they want—a healthy environment—so they don't see
much point in talking a lot more about that, when there is so much to be done
now, and precious little time to do it. Their attitude seems to be: "Let's begin. Let's take action,
and see if we can't make a difference."
Now I found myself thinking:
"Strategies? Strategic
plan? We haven't got around to those, but we are purposeful, and we have plenty of action underway. What value will strategies really add?"
So at last Tuesday's discussion I prefaced my answers with a challenge to the students: if you want to
develop workable, effective strategies with organisations like Landcare groups,
you need to spend as much time appreciating the present as you do anticipating
the future. Strategies need to take
account of what people are doing now, and why they do these things, and what is
working well as they take action, and why.
Once you look hard at this, people start to
see where they might need to do things differently. And so it was for me. As I
worked through their questions, laying out what we were doing and what was working, I started to see gaps in what we were doing.
I took first our over-arching goal, to protect bushland. We have pursued this goal (and I'm open to correction here) by documenting the splendid
flora and fauna around us in Riddells Creek.
We've made friends of the technical staff of government
programs like MRSC's environmental program (such as it is) and Department of
Sustainability and Environment (DSE) (now DEPI—Dept of Environment and Primary
Industries), who are very pleased to have an able organisation speaking up for the environment.
Our documentation and publicity has also made community members
locally (and at a distance) more aware of what is of value here. That is all working well, as far as
it goes.
Nested under that goal is one
of increasing our influence, within our local community and within the
government agencies which have the power and resources to protect
bushland. Submissions to new strategies,
and putting on record our concerns about protection of unprotected bushland, have been our ways to press our case, along with seeking modest funding for
immediate action to threatens to bushland, such as weed risk.
This has gained
RCL a foothold of recognition amongst the institutions that govern our natural
estate. However, there are two things
that strike me as underdone and potentially able to help along our work.
One is to cultivate relationships with decision makers in government, and the
other is to appeal more deeply to community members about the crisis facing our
bushland. Although we wouldn't want to
be seen to be crying wolf, crisis draws attention.
At the same time, we need to draw Landcare members into active participation in the projects we see possible. We really need a strategy here, a way of
reaching out to our community and saying what we're doing and what we want help
with. Yes, a few of us will then have to
do that strategy (!) but bringing in more enthusiastic people as
active participants and managers of projects makes us more powerful and more sustainable.
I think we need to make better use of the people and projects we've already got. We need to publicise what we are doing (as we are in this blog), personalise what we are doing (by showing the people behind our projects), and ask for what we want from our community. This is nothing new - we get people onto the committee of management by asking them to join. We just need to do it a bit more, and target the skills we need for the projects we envisage.
As I worked through the
students' questions, it was clear to me that they too thought we needed to up
the wattage a bit. I was very strict
with them on this—we have only as much time and energy as our members choose to
put into RCL. So take this as a question on notice, and give us your ideas:
What will draw in more people to take responsibility for caring for our bushland?
As we find answers to this, we'll get stronger.
Regarding the perceived need to 'up the wattage a bit'....
ReplyDeleteI think an important aspect of volunteer groups such as RCL to remember, and indeed with non-volunteer groups, is that wattage increases and decreases over time, goes up and goes down, has surges and down time....fortunately for RCL we have never had a black out. Having been in RCL since its inception I can point to its surges and its downtime and point to reasons for them. Perhaps worth thinking about looking at a group's longevity, looking at a group's 'activity' across time rather than at any one point in time....