“The community consultations undertaken by Sefa gave WWF – Australia a deeper understanding of how we could ‘future-proof’ Australia by supporting community-led, regenerative ventures.”
WWF - Australia is exploring ways to ‘future-proof Australian society’ as part of its Regenerate Australia agenda.
Sefa, in collaboration with Sefa Partnerships, were engaged by WWF - Australia to undertake consultations in regional communities to explore the potential to unlock community ventures that will contribute to local regenerative economy.
We conducted community consultations in three local government areas (LGAs) – Wingecarribee, Towong, and Eurobodalla. Each of the LGAs are experiencing recovery from the 2019/20 bushfires differently, with COVID adding complexity to an already challenging backdrop.
Working together, Sefa and Sefa Partnerships connected with fifty people from multiple sectors across the three LGAs – thirty spoke as representatives of organisations and the remainder contributed as individuals.
With the combined expertise of Sefa and Sefa Partnerships, the team were able to unearth ideas for regeneration based on local knowledge and develop a community-centered model of support. In addition to a community-centered model of support, the research embedded insights for WWF - Australia around on-the-ground relationships and developing grass-roots impact enterprises.
Sefa Partnerships has strong expertise in connecting with community members, leaders, and small organisations. This was important to build a meaningful, structured and community-oriented approach to the collaboration. Sefa brought a financial discipline to the engagement. This informed an approach that reconciled the individual models of engagement with a larger model for forecasting growth and systems change.
This collaboration benefited all three parties by expanding our understanding of unmet needs in communities. The ability for the collective team to apply different disciplines of thought and process to the work enabled a holistic exploration of the assumptions that WWF – Australia was testing. This also enabled greater insights into the current stage, allowing WWF - Australia to realistically build out the next phase of the project. We presented three feasible models for WWF - Australia to consider for the next phase of activity.
