Workshops +

community development

I am an experienced group worker and community development practitioner with skills in building fun safe polyvagal informed relational containers and the facilitation of embodied, engaging, playful, creative, experiential content driven workshops.

What is on offer?

  • Boundary making is an ongoing practice important for all of us in our personal and professional lives. This workshop covers three important domains of working our relational boundaries - which includes videos, activities, and useful practices, grounded in a polyvagal and somatic lens.

    Who is it for? community workers, health workers, teachers, NDIS Support workers, pychologists, social workers, youth workers, nurses, volunteers etc.

  • Practical, engaging and informative workshop on understanding the stress response. Develop skills and understandings to be a support for yourself as well as loved ones, colleagues and peers in a time of multiple crisis. Contribute to creating increased connection and resilience.

    Who is it for? This program was originally developed to support NSW RFS volunteers who are faced with increasingly brutal fire seasons as a result of the climate crisis.

    This would be useful for all frontline workers, first responders and anyone working in high pressure scenario and/or with vulnerable people

Collaborative achievements

  • Walter Mangold Trust Recipient 2007 - Peace Education work with street living youth, PUE, Mexico with NGO 'Rectification Mundial' in partnership with Instituto Poblano de la Juventud de Puebla and Foundation JUCONI Inc (2008).

  • Development and delivery of successful local interfaith cultural programs in partnership with Darebin Council, Yarra Trams + Local business owners - Chalice Uniting Church 2010

  • Development and delivery of innovative 'Bring your Bills Day' events in partnership with Footscray Legal Service, Energy providers and Ombudsmen Services to address widespread debt related issues in migrant and refugee populations - Lentara UnitingCare - Sunshine Mission 2011

  • Development coordination of youth development leadership committees - Yarra City Council 2014

  • Committee Member - Australian Living Peace Museum 2014

  • Development, coordination + facilitation of LGBTIQ+ Peer Mentoring Groups, Bellingen + Nambucca LGA's - 2015 - present with support from community based group 'Bent in Bellingen' and partnerships with Genhealth, Headspace.

  • Developed, authored and delivered school based Digital Leadership program addressing a range of online issues 2015-16 in partnership with NSW Health.

  • Rainbow Fair 2017 - community based response to increased tension due to the same sex Marriage Plebiscite

  • Coordinated first ever LGBTIQ+ Youth camp on NSW Mid North Coast - 2017, in partnership with community based steering committee + Aurora Group.

  • LGBTIQ+ Youth Forum, in partnership with community steering committee + Aurora Group.

  • Development, coordination, facilitation of participatory trauma informed yoga program for at risk regional young people in partnership with Dorrigo Youth Centre Committee, Dorrigo High School + St Vincent De Paul - 2018 

  • Lead Lovebites Facilitator 2016 - present 

  • Save a Mate AOD Harm Minimisation Facilitator 2019 - present. 

  • Coordinated, facilitated and produced youth podcasting skills program and podcast "The Local Queer" in partnership with Grow the Music- 2022 - PHN funded. 

  • Palestine Action “Gather for Gaza”, “Where Olive Trees Weep”, Film Screening, “The Last Sky” Film Screening.

Community Development Practice

My community development practice is built on the belief that this work at it’s heart is relational, and about emancipation from coercive and oppressive power structures that inhabit our relating to one another.

I place importance and integrity on group dynamics/group process, consciousness-raising and participation and modelling the values of empowerment, intersectional feminism, social justice, self determination and acting collectively.

I am always learning how to embody a de-colonial, anti racist, anti oppressive practice. I thank my friends and colleagues who are First Nations and People of Culture for these lessons.

As a white bodied person I believe our inequitable system’s focus on individualism and materialism is the source of much despair, mental illness, violence and isolation in our communities.

If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.

Dr Lilla Watson has always said she was not comfortable being credited for something that had been born of a collective process.  She prefers the words be credited “Aboriginal activists group, Queensland, 1970s”. 

“Leaders who do not act dialogically, but insist on imposing their decisions, do not organize the people–they manipulate them. They do not liberate, nor are they liberated: they oppress.”

- Paulo Friere