Perspectives from the community and university sectors: Annual Forum Podcasts
Public purpose partnerships – perspectives from the community and university sectors
The coronavirus pandemic has brought into sharp relief the importance of what many working in the public purpose sectors have known for years – that coming together and working collaboratively is essential for making a positive difference across our communities.
This time last year, a diverse group of speakers at our Annual Forum, Delivering public purpose work in the next economy, shared their perspectives on what’s needed for genuine collaboration to be realised, and hence greater public value.
Karyn Walsh, a long-time social justice champion and CEO of Micah Projects (a not-for-profit organisation providing support and advocacy services to create social justice and respond to injustice) called out some of the key challenges community organisations experience when working with government, such as how tendering and budget processes can distort achieving more effective solutions.
We’ve got to listen to all voices. It’s no good saying we’ll just listen to consumers or service providers or governments or corporates or researchers. You need everyone to come around the table and give their insight because most of the issues we’re trying to solve, they’re not homogenous problems for the individual …. we’ve [all] got different realities. I think partnering requires us to respect those realities.
To drive more comprehensive service delivery models requires ongoing cooperation, collaboration and funding … What we need is to really put the glue in.
And for the community sector, we have to reflect, as not-for-profits, what is our role? How do we change and adapt? How do we work together more as well as how do we work with government?
And most importantly for a democracy, it’s how we make sure that the independent voice of lived experience has a place in public policy.
To view the podcast with Karyn Walsh, click here.
Jo Sheppard, Director of Stakeholder Engagement at the University of Southern Queensland (and previously CEO of the Toowoomba Chamber of Commerce) shared her perspectives on the role of universities, particularly those located in regional areas, for building strong communities.
If you’ve got a university in your region, you’re incredibly lucky … but there’s no clarity around – how do we leverage the skills that a university brings to a region?
Speaking about rural and regional Queensland, it’s tough … disruption is everywhere. It’s so important that we think strategically about what’s going to enable our regions to still thrive. USQ has done a brilliant body of work around resilient regions and they’ve identified some of the criteria that you can measure in your community which gives you a good indication of how resilient you are. We need to think about strategies that are going to have impact – not only to individual communities – but also more broadly to regions across Australia.
During my working career, I’ve seen a gradual shift away from siloes into more collaborative work practices … We need to collaborate because we’re competing with the rest of the world. I think that’s a really positive thing and moving forward, regions who can work together for real – not just talk about it – to provide shared solutions are the regions that are really going to stand out.
To view the podcast with Jo Sheppard, click here.