Changing Lives, Changing Communities works to create new ways for people – citizens, community organisations, the private sector and government representatives – to come together, envision and ask “what will it take to create communities where everyone contributes, matters and belongs?”
As we continue to develop and prepare for a second round of two-day events, we have collated a quick snapshot of who came along and what they thought.
More than 820 people attended 12 events in communities across Queensland. The most bumper turn-outs were recorded at the Gold Coast and Townsville, with 102 and 117 participants respectively.
A diverse range of community members attended Changing Lives, Changing Communities events. The range of backgrounds and lived experience of each participant made sure each Changing Lives, Changing Communities event took turns unique to every neighbourhood visited.
More than 75% of event participants surveyed reported finding information presented across the two days to be either useful or very useful.
Again, more than 75% of event participants surveyed thought the stories and information presented would benefit them or their organisation in the future. A small percentage disagreed.
People reported walking away from the events feeling better about their communities, with marked improvements of more than 15% across the key metrics of shared vision, future planning, and knowing what role they each play in change.
Local Champions are key to creating and sustaining change in local communities, to build on the work at these events.
QCOSS trained 22 people to be Local Champions in their communities, while our event partners at Queenslanders with Disability Network trained 15.
You can download the full infographic as a PDF by following this link. An accessible Word version is available here.
To find out more about the Changing Lives, Changing Communities project, please visit this page.
This work is in partnership with QCOSS, Queenslanders with Disability Network (QDN) and the Queensland Human Rights Commission.