Building Communities in Inner Melbourne: A Case Study

Abstract

On July 13 1998 over 130 people packed into a meeting room in Collingwood, an inner Melbourne suburb. They had come (as they do regularly) to a meeting of the North Yarra Community Health (NYCH) Community Liaison Committee. In July they heard a presentation by a City of Yarra Officer on the newly established Safer Cities Program, and had an update by a Board of Management member on the issue of drug use. They also welcomed, Stefan Romaniw, the Chairperson of the Victorian Multicultural Commission who had been invited to speak to the group. One of the important features of this meeting was that, like all the other public meetings of the Community Liaison Committee, it was simultaneously translated into eight community languages. Meetings such as this have been held at regular intervals by NYCH since 1994, and attract between 100 and 150 participants. The origins of this remarkable Committee and the reasons for its continued success are discussed in this case study.