Mainstreaming Change: Learning from Community Strengthening in Victoria

Community strengthening includes social, economic and environmental outcomes and the way to achieve these is focused effort on creating stronger communities through enhancing connectedness, engagement and partnerships between various stakeholders and community. Mainstream approach to community strengthening as experimented by the Victorian State Government, has the potential to advance the development of alternative public policy ideas, in particular power devolved to a community level rather than remaining centralised, governments partnering rather than contracting, a community-focused rather than market driven practice, outcomes linked to the holistic needs of communities rather then simply economic outcomes and opportunities to explore revitalized democratic practices