The project aims to empower local African-Australian communities to build the knowledge, skills, and capability to navigate service systems, in order improve social and economic outcomes for the community.
The project is focussed on three priority areas identified by the local community through extensive community consultation in 2014. They are employment, empowering women, and community participation of the African-Australian community across the municipality.
Empowering Women Project
Since October 2014, female community leaders from African backgrounds have been meeting as part of the African-Australian Community Partnership Project to discuss how we can work collaboratively to empower women and improve quality of life.
The Empowering Women Project focuses on the following key areas identified by the women:
- Women's leadership
- Women's health
- Family violence prevention
- Capacity building
- Financial literacy
- Gender equality.
Empowering Women Leadership Development Program
A key priority identified by the women involved in the Empowering Women Project was leadership development. A partnership was formed between the women’s steering group, City of Melbourne and RMIT University to deliver a Leadership Development Program to address this priority.
The Leadership Development Program ran for six weeks with each session consisting of a female guest presenter from an African background discussing their experience and expertise, as well as a theoretical component delivered by RMIT University.
The program was jointly designed and covered topics including:
- Leadership theory and practice
- Ethically and authentically leading teams
- Recognising and resolving conflict in teams
- Responsible leadership
- Effective communication
- Organisational and time management skills
- Building and maintaining effective networks.
Twenty-five women – aged 19-65, mainly from the Horn of Africa – participated in the course to improve their knowledge, skills and confidence in leadership. On Sunday 26 March 2017, the women graduated from the course and SBS TV was there to film their graduation.