Narrogin Community Builders discuss Community Development Action Plan at John Higgins Community Centre

About 50 people gathered at the John Higgins Community Centre on Wednesday to discuss the Narrogin Community Development Action Plan and hear about community projects in the works. The Narrogin Community Builders meeting came after a series of community opportunity workshops organised by Rural Aid and Bank of I.D.E.A.S founder-director Peter Kenyon around the Wheatbelt South last year. The action plan was presented to the group and representatives from a variety of community organisations spoke about what comes next. “Interesting enough the people that attended last night were quite different from the people who attended the COW (community opportunity workshop) which in a way is good,” NCB’s Roxanne McNab said on Thursday. “We had a few people that had been to both and that’s also good because that means a lot more people have seen what the Community Builders are all about and trying to achieve, to get the community talking and coming up with ideas.” The group’s vision is to nurture an inclusive, safe and vibrant community and it seeks to do so by connecting community betterment ideas with the people that can make them happen. “I think just talking to the community like that . . . it gets people networking and communicating and finding other groups that they can join,” Ms Nab said. “Even if they had an idea and they wanted to start a certain sort of action group up, well there’s like-minded people in that room. “The people that come to those workshops and presentations — they are the doers in town.” The meeting closed with talks from Narrogin Flaming BBQ Festival founder Mark Walling and street library operator Jonathon Gillis. “We chose those two speakers because Mark’s project is quite big, he had to organise everything and get a committee,” Ms McNab said. “What we wanted to showcase was it doesn’t have to be that big — Jonathon just has a little fridge out the front of his house yet he’s given the community something they want.” Mr Walling spoke about how he organised last year’s inaugural barbecue festival and Mr Gillis, who now regularly hits the road with buckets of books to share around the region, shared his story of growth. “I had no goal or anything — I just put it out there,” he said. “I had no idea that it was going to take me this far.”