There is a lot that we share with our colleagues in Australia. Both Canada and Australia are countries with big spaces between cities, it can take over four hours to travel from Sydney to Perth. It takes a little longer to travel from Halifax to Vancouver. Both countries have British roots although Canada’s seem to have dimmed with the diversity of our population. Both countries, or at least community change leaders, are deeply interested in the intersection between community engagement and collective impact.
In October 2016, Collaborating for Impact and Together SA hosted a series of Masterclasses across Australia exploring these two 
constructs. I was able to join Australian colleagues: Max Hardy, an associate with Collaborating for Impact and Kevin Robbie, CEO of the United Way of Australia. Together, we explored the dynamics of community change from a wide variety of lenses and perspectives.
Max has deep experience in co-design and co-delivery from his time as a consultant with Twyfords. More recently, Max has been engaged in facilitating citizen juries processes across Australia. Citizen juries are a process where a diverse group of local citizens listen to a variety of stakeholders and then make recommendations to move forward based on the evidence that they have heard. To learn more about the citizen jury process here is a link to New Democracy (http://www.newdemocracy.com.au/).
Kevin shared the work that the United Way of Australia has engaged in to build strong partnerships with business to transform communities. This presentation contained both highlights of change but also some lessons that the United Way has learned along the path.
Tamarack’s contribution to the Community Engagement masterclass included an overview of collective impact and a case study of community engagement building on the experience of the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction.
This mix of perspectives provided a unique and rich day of learning for participants across Australia. Included in the session were a number of tools to practice engagement, stories illustrating impact and rich dialogue with participants. Attached is the workshop power point where you can explore the examples, stories and tools.
While the distance from Canada to Australia is far, the commonality of approach to community engagement is similar but nuanced. Deep citizen engagement can come from co-design and approaches such as citizen juries. What would it take for Canada to be ready to engage in this way?
Note: Thanks to Collaborating for Impact and Together SA for hosting the Community Engagement Masterclass Series. To learn more about collective impact and community engagement in Australia, please visit their websites.
