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Mount Gambier Charter For Children
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Following the series of forums and workshops held in Mount Gambier over the past two years the City of Mount Gambier’s Lifelong Learning Sub Committee is developing partnership projects which enhance our community across each stage of the learning cycle.With a goal of making Mount Gambier the most liveable City for all of our citizens, we recognised the importance of developing a pledge with local services to allow our children to flourish in their earliest years.
To date the sub-committee has primarily focused on partnerships in the early childhood stage of the lifelong learning cycle.
Through the Perspectives of the Child project we have listened to young children as well as the early learning educators who support them. This has been important as the City recognises the value in encouraging and respecting the perspectives of children and responding to their requests and interests.
We appreciate it takes a village to raise a child, and that villages are enhanced by having inquisitive, active, happy children who explore and participate actively in community life.
The City of Mount Gambier welcomes the opportunity of working with our “whole village”, as we work towards developing a Children’s Charter for this City.
In late 2014, we met with a broad representation of local champions, to draft the Mount Gambier Charter for Children. Check out the video here.
This charter aims to serve as an aspirational set of principles, to guide the work of Council and early learning services who wish to subscribe to the Charter’s principles.
Though the focus is early childhood, with the aim of decreasing rates of developmental delay in the region (recorded independently by the Australian Early Childhood Index -AEDI) we recognise the Charter principles have relevance and application across childhood.
For further information on the Mount Gambier Charter for Children, please contact City of Mount Gambier Community Development Officer, Alison Brash on (08) 8721 2504 or abrash@mountgambier.sa.gov.au.
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Social Capital & Community-Based Education & Learning: From Agency to Relationship-based Services
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Over the past two years the City of Mount Gambier have been privileged to partner with Flinders University, bringing education professionals Dr George Otero (Director of the Centre for Relational Learning in Sante Fe, New Mexico) and Professor John Halsey (the Sidney Myer Chair of Rural Education and Communities in the School of Education at Flinders University) to Mount Gambier; developing a commitment to the relational learning process in partnership with our community.
Dr Otero's fundamental philosophy is simple:
"We believe that our relationships hold the keys to educational success"
2012 saw a Sidney Myer Rural Lecture Series 'Rural Communities...Education for the 21st Century' hosted in Mount Gambier (watch it here). This lecture was an incredible success and received an overwhelming response from participants wanting to be involved in further workshops to challenge the traditional education paradigm and develop a local whole of community, relationship based approach to educationand learning; raising the question where to from here?
A two-day workshop with Dr Otero and Professor Halsey titled 'Social Capital and Community-based Education & Learning: From Agency to Relationship-based Services' was held in Mount Gambier in 2013.
The aim of the workshop was to reconnect with the content and input from the Sidney Myer Rural Lecture Series 'Rural Communities...Education for the 21st Century' lecture; engaging participants in the process of moving toward relational, whole of community based ways of providing education, human services and support.
Topics covered included:
- Social capital and community-based education and learning: Rural contextual factors specific to Mount Gambier,
- Exploring partnerships: Identifying opportunities to make them work and how,
- From agency to relationship-based services: Exploring being and working in a relationship-based way, and
- Progressing being and working in a relationship-based way: Identifying areas of change and what needs to be done.
The strong attendance at these sessions emphasised that relational, whole of community based ways of providing education, human and support services will form the pillars of our approach to developing a sustainable community learning model, specifically designed to meet the ongoing needs of our community - with our community.
Please visit the 'Library' for further information and extensive documentation relating to Dr Otero's philosophy.