By Mikayla van Loon
The Mooroolbark Community House was officially launched with a gathering of the key representatives and stakeholders on Tuesday 29 April.
Eight months since the announcement of a new community house in the suburb, the amalgamation of many community leaders and government entities working tirelessly to bring the house to life enabled the launch to occur less than 12 months in.
As the auspicing body, Mooroolbark Umbrella Group (MUG) president Randall Bourchier opened the official proceedings, calling the whole community house process “rich and very productive” so far.
First thanking all the MUG members for their “visionary and (their) time consuming work in driving and responding ably and responsibly to what would sometimes be quite a demanding, steep learning curve”, Mr Bourchier went on to express gratitude to everyone involved.
Representing the State Government and minister Ros Spence, North Eastern Metropolitan region MP Sonja Terpstra echoed thanks to all who made the house happen.
“The community really benefits when we all work together to see a dream like this become a reality,” she said.
“They say it takes a village, and Mooroolbark really does epitomise what it is to have a village type feel and a community that comes together.”
The house received funding from the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing (DFFH) to establish in July last year, allowing Mooroolbark to join the suite of community houses in the Yarra Ranges.
In total the Victorian Government put $43 million into the Neighbourhood House Coordination Program in the last budget, which Ms Terpstra said “make neighbourhood houses like this come alive”.
Ms Terpstra said community houses not only provide “a place to connect and to visit and to meet new people in your own community” but are extremely beneficial in times of natural disasters.
Yarra Ranges Council mayor Jim Child also touched on the importance of community houses reflecting on his involvement with the Yarra Junction community house.
“We’ve got 12 of these facilities through the municipality. We are a large municipality, 2500 square kilometres, 55 townships, and we’ve got 12 of these magnificent community houses,” he said.
“The first one that I was involved with was up to Yarra Junction in 1976…and the return we got from that was absolutely amazing.
“Those partnerships that we’ve got with those community houses, we really value that.”
Finally, the house’s foundation coordinator Renae Jones spoke of what’s happened so far and what’s next.
“Since the announcement of the Mooroolbark Community House, the community have been very excited and very enthusiastic that there’s going to be things to do again inside the community centre,” she said.
“Through our initial community consultations, both in person and online, we’ve ended up with submissions (sic) as to what people would like to do. When we went away and consolidated the ideas, we got over 100 so there’s quite a lot.”
For term one this year, the house ran a Step and Connect women’s walking group in partnership with Inspiro, some volunteer Justices of the Peace set up document signing, the Creative Craftanooners and some pop-up Eastern Health services.
Ms Jones said this term, the house was excited to launch an art club as one of the new offerings.
“That’s going to be just an open art studio. Come along once a week, carry out projects, paint, draw, whatever they want to do.”
The hope is it will then expand to a kids craft space so parents or caregivers can make and create with little ones.
“Mooroolbark has a large portion of residents who raised their families here and are now retired in that area,” Ms Jones said.
“Working over in Shop 16, we found that there were many nostalgic people in the area that wanted to talk about what the Mooroolbark Terrace used to be like, or the days of the Red Earth Festival.”
That’s why, in partnership with Marion Stott of the Mooroolbark History Group, there will soon be history chats where people come along, “talk about the good old days” and bring photos or other items.
Also on the agenda are scone cooking classes with the CWA, programmes and classes around cooking, food waste, food preservation, mental health workshops and offering space for the Mooroolbark Chin community to use the house.
“We’re looking forward to strengthening our existing partnerships, developing new ones, because there’s many organisations in Mooroolbark, and it’s an honour and a privilege to be part of this fantastic addition to Mooroolbark,” Ms Jones said.
To mark the occasion, Ms Terpstra had the honour of partaking in a ribbon cutting ceremony to officially open the Mooroolbark Community House.
