I joined Flemington Works in early 2022 with a clear ask from our funders: To evolve a community-centred, place-based employment program into a community-led collective impact initiative.

Over three years, I led a team working alongside residents of the Flemington Public Housing Estate to build trust, deepen relationships, and centre lived experience in all aspects of the work. This included:

• Strengthening relationships with a diverse and dynamic resident community.

• Forming an alliance of 20+ organisations working across employment, youth, health, housing, and education.

• Engaging key policy and funding partners, including local and state government, to support long-term systems change.

• Embedding collaborative ways of working, including shared governance, community facilitation, and multi-stakeholder working groups.

A major highlight of this work was bringing together over 50 stakeholders to develop a shared aspiration, measurement framework, and action plan to advance a community vision that would tackle the root causes of social and economic exclusion experienced by residents. Using a Collective Impact approach, Flemington Works served as a backbone to the initiative.

This work reaffirmed the power of community-led systems change, where relational work, slow trust-building, and shifting power are not side projects but a central strategy.

It also deepened my conviction that real systems change only happens with community, not to them.