Kyabram Community and Learning Centre is advocating for more funding for neighbourhood houses across Victoria as part of the Keep Our Doors Open campaign.
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Regional communities are throwing support behind local neighbourhood houses as the campaign for better funding ramps up.
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Kyabram Community and Learning Centre and Girgarre Community Cottage are among over 400 vital neighbourhood houses across Victoria that have joined the Keep Our Doors Open campaign, calling on the Victorian Government to increase annual funding by $11.7 million, or risk the closure of 200 neighbourhood houses.
Community members are pouring their hearts into postcards, sharing powerful stories with the government about how their neighbourhood house transforms lives.
Sally Canning is the only paid employee of Girgarre Community Cottage and sees about 200 people walk in every week to use the cottage’s services.
She said the cottage was pivotal to keeping a small town such as Girgarre running.
“Whilst our town is small, we support so many people — and with the increase of the urban sprawl ... we’re getting more demand than ever — we can see we’re needed,” she said.
Postcards written at the Girgarre Community Cottage as part of the Keep Our Doors Open campaign.
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While the cottage provides essential lifelines including meals, transport, playgroups and meeting spaces for community groups, Ms Canning said inadequate funding was restricting what they could achieve.
“It’s just heartbreaking because you can’t action all the plans we need to because we just don’t have the funds to do it,” she said.
Twenty minutes down the road, KCLC stands as a community cornerstone, delivering a comprehensive range of vital services, from early learning and business services to family support services and support groups.
While chief executive Jennifer Savage believes the service remains “stable” short-term, ongoing funding cuts could force KCLC to drastically reduce life-saving services.
“We are, at times, literally helping people stay alive — we’re not being dramatic,” Ms Savage said.
“This isn't just about a couple of social groups … there are people out there where this will mean lives (are at risk) and pressure being up on to the health system.
“This is going to end up costing money one way or the other.”
She said government funding had declined by 20 per cent over the past decade, just when families facing cost-of-living pressures needed these services most.
“When you drop funding by 20 per cent, (we) can’t keep people employed,” she said.
“(We’re) relying on volunteers even more, but you can’t ... have the same expectations on a volunteer as you can on an employee.”
Ms Savage said KCLC had been overwhelmed with support from the community through this campaign — having run out of its first batch of postcards already.
However, she emphasised that community pressure had to intensify to secure these essential services.
“For most people, we’re talking about what they need,” Ms Savage said.
“During this campaign, with the postcards ... we’ve received quite a few messages that have said, without (KCLC), I would no longer be on this earth.”
Community members wanting to support the campaign can visit their local neighbourhood house to fill out a postcard and make their voice heard.
When the campaign comes to a close in December, postcards from around the region will be delivered to state Member for Murray Plains Peter Walsh.
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