Community Development Initiatives: Supporting Indigenous Australians

This report explores community development strategies aimed at addressing the challenges faced by Indigenous Australians, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. It highlights the core characteristics of community development programs, focusing on economic participation, health, s...Read More

Community
Development

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
The core community development characteristics.................................................................3
The principles (aims) of the Project.......................................................................................4
Underlying values and skills required by the Community Workers......................................5
The target community/groups.................................................................................................6
The stakeholders.....................................................................................................................7
Education initiatives/public awareness initiatives..................................................................8
How this program is different or similar from other projects (Is it unique?).........................8
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Communication development is the process where the members of community tends to
support through agencies to analyse and take collective actions on the concerning issues which is
essential for them. The development of community leads to empower the members and also
create stronger and connected communities. It is the holistic approach which is based on the
principles of empowerment, inclusion, social justice, human rights and many more. There are
several potential outcomes of both individual and community developments in which families
and children are involved regarding the community development initiatives which is beneficial
for the enhancement of skills, knowledge, self-efficacy and community connectedness (Paige
and et. al., 2019). For this report, Indigenous population of Australia is considered that include
Aboriginal and Torres strait islanders as these people belong from the most disadvantaged group
from their countries. The majority of these people are unemployed, experience lower literacy
level and prone to all the social and health issues. Therefore, the report includes the discussion
about community development, principles, values, skills, targeted group, stakeholder analysis
and many more.
MAIN BODY
The core community development characteristics
The community development program addresses the wide range of issues that leads to
consider several aims which include enhancement of health services, strengthening cultural links,
spreading awareness for the suitable health issues and nutritional needs of children regarding
their growth. For this, the suitable program leads to address the several building blocks by
focusing over suitable features like economic participation, health and so on. In regard of this,
the suitable features are used for the Indigenous people for their community development in
terms of addressing the several blocks which are as follows: Economic participation was addressed by providing jobs and employment to the local
community members through program, offering training opportunities, connect
communities with companies by supporting the development of small business
development (Sebastian and et. al., 2021). Health was also addressed by developing and improving the overall services by
considering the enhancement of physical activities in terms of recreation, games and

sports. It also leads to increase availability of healthy food within the stores by creating
safe environmental conditions. Safe environment was developed by setting up prominent activities for the youth in
terms of preventing them from using alcohol, drugs and also hanging around the streets.
The community members and government also re-design the settlement in terms of
addressing the issues with broken glass and fences. Leadership and governance was increased by offering training and proper support and
also developed to support the indigenous community members regarding the
development and running of their own businesses and programs.
 Healthy housing includes three programs in which one include the participatory planning
for the settlement of plan and the other two programs include improved access to the
drinking water and sewerage system.
So, the community engagement seems like critical for the sustainability of the program
with the high level of participation of the community that seems more sustainable and
stakeholders had more confidence over the sustainability program.
The principles (aims) of the Project
Indigenous people are supporters and spokespersons of humanity’s cultural diversity.
These people have been marginalised by the controlling societies and also face assimilation and
ethical genocide. With the multicultural societies, indigenous people pursue an end to such
minimal and fringe accomadations as they have effective contribution towards the society. These
people bring both national and international debate regarding the valuable advice towards the
great issues which are being faced by humanity (Harnett and Featherstone, 2020). Further, in
2003 the permanent forum for the Indigenous matters stressed in the second session which is
important for recognising the cultural diversity regarding the development process and the need
for the sustainable development.
Indigenous people have strong living cultures and also seek better position in the present
world as they are not opposing the growth but they see themselves as the victims of progress and
now urging to become the participant in sustainable development. Indigenous people and ethnic
minorities are considered to be poverty-stricken as they are only 5% of the world population and
they also account for around 15% of the extreme poor condition of world. Indigenous people and

ethnic minorities tends to continue in terms of facing marginalization and exclusion considering
the shortage of equal access to the basic services.
For this, the Indigenous women are less interested in utilizing healthcare facilities for birth
of their child due to differentiation, lack of esteem and cultural practices. The Indigenous
population have access to the cleanliness and electricity which 15% and 18% instead of other
region. These people help in protecting the habitat, oppose climate change and develop resilience
to natural disaster. Also, the permanent forum also expresses the concern regarding the
development practices that does not consider the characteristics of Indigenous communities and
also undermining meaningful ways of participatory development (McCarthy, Chang and
Brimblecombe, 2018).
Underlying values and skills required by the Community Workers
The community workers provide personal, social, physical, mental and other services to the
disadvantaged or minor groups of individuals with communities. The community service
workers also help in the entire communities on the large level with the particular group. Further,
the social work is considering the varied and demanding profession as it require the practitioner
to wear several hats like caretaker, therapist, adviser and so on. Due to this, it will need basic
social work skills and quality which is discussed as: Empathy: This ability leads to identify the effective experience of someone else’s needs,
emotions and circumstances. Social workers help people in their most challenging
logistical and emotional issues of their lives (Scott, Staines and Morton, 2021). The needs
of social workers are intellectual and emotional in terms of understanding the experience
of people. Social perceptiveness: In terms of collecting and processing the verbal information, the
social worker need to be sensitive to the body postures, imputations and ethical patterns
of behaviour. Further some clients also state their requirements and also work towards the
solutions in the focused manner as they will find more difficult to convey themselves
verbally. Active listening: It is the potential to carefully pay attention and ask pertinently question
and also retain verbal transferred detail which is crucial for the counselling factors of
social work (Altman and Klein, 2018). It leads to develop trust, open doors and discover

valuable details regarding the individual who seek their help and understand the unique
circumstances. Self-awareness: The social workers tends to obtain response on the overall performance
from their clients, supervisors and the other sources but there is no substitution for the
self-awareness. Being present to evaluate the own performance and also work towards
the improvement is considered as the invaluable skill. Cooperation: It is the kind persuasion that might solve the problem as active cooperation
leads to produce an another way to prominently satisfy the overall solution (Dickson,
2018). Being able to compromise, negotiate and well effectively with others is important
for the effective coordination of attempts which are required in the social work. Relaxation and De-compression: Social work is considered as the honourable
occupation but also considered as the stressful. In terms of getting busy and efficient at
the work, it is essential to take advantages of the private time by focusing over the own
requirements.
 Organisation: Social workers have to deal with the busy schedules, massive workloads
and unpaid work. For effectively managing the overall priorities and the logistical factors
of the job is helpful to enhance the amount of time and due to this, people need to
develop their schedule to provide useful services to their clients.
The target community/groups
The target group or community is the Indigenous people as the people of this community
has number of issues considering because this community gets neglected since long period of
time. This community gets target because Indigenous people represent among the 30% and more
than 50% of the total population including Peru, Bolivia and others. According to the ILO
Convention No. 169 on the Indigenous and tribal people in the independent countries opted in
1989 and the draft universal statement on Indigenous rights under the composition at the United
Nations have all the factors (Roseby and et. al., 2019). These people are located in several areas
including the arid mountainous regions, Meso-American and remote tropical rainforest areas in
the amazon and in Central America.
Besides from this, the difficult natural environments, Indigenous people tends to manage in
terms of sustaining in the existence in ecological delicate locations with low population the carry
effective capacity. For this, most of the people have suitable knowledge of their environment

regarding the sustainable management of their resources. For this, by taking the comparison of
the income level it has been interpreted with caution due to the received income for the poor
estimate of penury in the case of subsistence farmers who do not linked much with the market.
For this, the ratio among Indigenous and non-indigenous men is 3.5 to 1 and among indigenous
men and women is 4 to 1.
For this, the extending international recognition of Indigenous rights coexist with the
democratization process within the several counties of the region and also gets influenced as
sometimes it is very remarkable achievement for the legal and constitutional recognition (Larkin,
2020). Therefore, the Indigenous people tends to adopt effectiveness for the ecological sensitive
environments and also consider the integral part of nature instead of seeing nature as the subject
to human domination.
The stakeholders
The engagement of stakeholders depicts in several ways including the connection of people
and also involve the community people regarding the overall development and implementation
of community initiatives. The involvement is not all about the public relation or marketing for
the specific view or decision but it is all about retaining the community notified and involved and
also having the effective possession and authority in community development programmes. For
this, the involved stakeholders are community members, government, citizens and victims.
As the individuals are the group who has a lodged curiosity in the natural assets of the
project area and also get affected by the project activities and also has something in terms of
gaining and losing. Stakeholders are those who need proper goals of the project and effective
participation regarding the support for the critical success factors (MacPhail and McKay, 2018).
The objectives and goals of stakeholders’ analysis is developed for the strategic view for the
human and institutional landscape considering the relationship among the distinct stakeholders
and the affairs which they care most.
Stakeholder analysis is the difficult task and also different regarding the spending on the
overall sector of the company. Involving with communities and overall development partners
tends to fuel the revision and development of company’s social investment and community
development approach. Therefore, stakeholder interaction leads to create a response loop that
leads to inform strategy, test the efficacy of innovation and communicate it with social
development progress externally.

Education initiatives/public awareness initiatives
The government is taking initiative to support every student of Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander to reach their full potential. Various strategies have been applied in the field of
education to meet the needs of Aboriginal students. The effective practices used in Aboriginal
education includes connection to the culture, sharing history, building capacity of leadership in
students, the togetherness of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students and building the ethical
competencies of staff (Gray and Gaminiratne, 2018). The Capability Framework was developed
to enhance the capacity of teachers in rural, remote and metropolitan areas in order to fulfil the
needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.
This framework helps teachers in self analysing their capabilities and supports the
teachers in performing the process through PDP process. The Aboriginal Education and
Communities Directorate organised various Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
(STEM) youth development camps for learners between the age of 5 to 11 years. These camps
were organised by collaborating with NSW Aboriginal Education Consultative Incorporated and
the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Mathematics Alliance.
The aim of the camp was to achieve good outcomes from the students by providing the
students access to post schooling and direction for employment in the field of Science,
Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. A membership program called Junior AECG
membership provides the Aboriginal students an opportunity to develop their skills such as
leadership, communication, public speaking and provides a platform to express their opinion and
feelings on the issues related to Aboriginal education (Hunter and Taylor, 2018). This program is
for students between the age of 6 to 12 years. To improve the pedagogical practices of teachers
Instructional Leaders have been appointed. They enhance the capacity of teachers in engaging
Aboriginal students in learning and to improve their results of numeracy.
How this program is different or similar from other projects (Is it unique?)
This program is not unique because there are number of programs which are similar with the
suitable program including several rural programs, development of rural people and so on. For
this, most of the indigenous people in the urban, rural and remote locations are successfully tends
to manage the wide span of programs and satisfactory services for their communities. The
indigenous community manage programs and organisation regarding the success of working and
suitable programs.

It also undertakes some literature concerning the utilization of community development
approaches and its proper support to the specific program. Most of the indigenous organisation in
remote areas leads to create successful management of wide range of programs and services for
their groups (Macniven, Canuto and Evans, 2021). The community has the effective ownership
and control over the decision making, culture include the central of the program including the
accepting of local conditions, past and community leaders.
Local indigenous staff work on the program consider better corporate governance, faithful
relationship with partners and elasticity in executing timelines. Presently, there is the shortage of
evaluation of data to evaluate the extent to which the community development practices are also
effective instead of other executions in carrying the successful indigenous governed schemes or
comparing community management against programs where the communities are not in charge
for the administration.
CONCLUSION
From the above discussion, it has been identified that in Australia the community
development programs put emphasis on the wide range of problems as communities in Northern
Territory and Queensland have high levels of community participation. These programs are
estimated with subjective methods by considering meetings and focus groups that include
community members, employees and other stakeholders. Therefore, the study showed the
shortage of transparency and difficult to make conclusive statement regarding the development
program. Also, no direct repercussions of the community development programs on fitness and
well-being were noticed.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Paige, E and et. al., 2019. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander absolute cardiovascular risk
assessment and management: systematic review of evidence to inform national
guidelines.
Sebastian, S and et. al., 2021. Notes from the field: applying the consolidated framework for
implementation research in a qualitative evaluation of implementation of the queensland
aboriginal and torres strait islander brief intervention training program. Evaluation &
the Health Professions, p.0163278721992815.
Harnett, P.H. and Featherstone, G., 2020. The role of decision making in the over-representation
of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in the Australian child protection
system. Children and youth services review, 113, p.105019.
McCarthy, L., Chang, A.B. and Brimblecombe, J., 2018. Food security experiences of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families with young children in an urban setting:
influencing factors and coping strategies. International journal of environmental
research and public health, 15(12), p.2649.
Scott, J., Staines, Z. and Morton, J., 2021. Strong communities and justice practices in the Torres
Strait Region. Journal of Sociology, p.14407833211031299.
Altman, J. and Klein, E., 2018. Lessons from a basic income programme for Indigenous
Australians. Oxford Development Studies, 46(1), pp.132-146.
Dickson, M.L., 2018. Understanding and valuing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of
working: opportunities for change in health service provision to Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander peoples (Doctoral dissertation, University of Sydney).
Roseby, R and et. al., 2019. Not just a policy; this is for real. An affirmative action policy to
encourage Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to seek employment in the
health workforce. Internal medicine journal, 49(7), pp.908-910.
Larkin, S., 2020. Locating Indigenous sovereignty: race and research in Indigenous health
policy-making. In Sovereign Subjects (pp. 168-178). Routledge.
MacPhail, C. and McKay, K., 2018. Social determinants in the sexual health of adolescent
Aboriginal Australians: a systematic review. Health & social care in the
community, 26(2), pp.131-146.
Gray, A. and Gaminiratne, K.H.W., 2018. Indicative projections of the Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander population to 2011. Canberra, ACT: Centre for Aboriginal Economic
Policy Research (CAEPR), The Australian National University.
Hunter, B. and Taylor, J., 2018. Indigenous labour force status to the year 2000: estimated
impacts of recent Budget cuts.
Macniven, R., Canuto, K.J. and Evans, J.R., 2021. Facilitators and barriers to physical activity
participation experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults: a mixed
methods systematic review protocol. JBI evidence synthesis, 19(7), pp.1659-1667.
Online
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