On any given day the rooms, halls and gardens of Banksia Gardens Community Services are flowing with life: people sharing a meal, old friends catching up over balls of wool, high school students taking part in an after school program or new parents playing with their children in the garden.
Yet, just beyond the walls of Banksia Gardens is Broadmeadows, one of Australia’s most disadvantaged postcodes with disproportionate levels of poverty, unemployment, illness and poor educational outcomes.
Banksia Gardens CEO Gina Dougall said despite all these challenges, the Broadmeadows community was brimming with ingenuity, cultural diversity, skills, experiences, hopes and aspirations.
“It’s a very disadvantaged community but at the same time I think there’s a great resilience to the people who live here,” she said.
Each week Banksia Gardens engages more than 1500 local people through its 65 on-site programs and six social enterprises.
For more than a decade, Hannah has walked the path between her home at the housing estate and Banksia Gardens nearly daily.
“Banksia Gardens means a lot actually – it’s like my second home,” she said.
“If you need something, they will try their best. If they can get it for you, they will and if they can’t, they still will.”
When she was four, Hannah started participating in Banksia Gardens programs. Unable to find her spot in mainstream education, Hannah forged her own path and now at just 15, she has started her own social enterprise, Naughty Broady, in collaboration with Banksia Gardens.
The enterprise employs youth from the local community to design and handmake craft products ready for sale. It’s mission is to challenge the stereotypes about the neighbourhood by showcasing the involvement and success of its youth.
Gina said a lot of Banksia Gardens programs and social enterprises were designed in collaboration with the people who access them.
“Banksia Gardens is about giving everyone access not just to opportunity, but to civic engagement, to meaningful participation – in short, to great justice,” she said.
“It’s opportunity isn’t it, if you’re shown opportunities, you get inspired.”
For close to a decade the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation has funded Banksia Gardens’ projects designed at creating a more resilient community.
A recent grant funded the planting of large trees to create a canopy area that local people could use as a ‘heat haven’ during extreme weather and a ‘food forest’ that produces food for local residents in the desolate area between Banksia Gardens and the Broadmeadows housing estate.
The creation of the heat haven and food forest were are part of Banksia Garden’s Renew Hub that integrates its circular economy model with community work and the transformation and landscaping of public areas to reduce the impacts of climate change. The Foundation has also supported their social enterprises.
Banksia Gardens Deputy CEO Jaime de Loma-Osorio Ricon said those who suffer the most from the consequences of climate change are generally the people who have contributed the least.
“That interconnection between social justice and sustainability has been a decisive factor in the way that our organisation operates,” he said.
Built on circular economy model, Banksia Gardens grows produce that is sold in its social enterprise cafes that employ young people from the Broadmeadows community. Left over produce is turned into value-add products like relish, jams and pickles ready for sale and finally the waste is turned into compost that is used to fertilise the garden produce.
Broadmeadows, like many suburbs in Melbourne’s North and West, is classified as a food swamp, with fast food options on every corner but not one place where they can access locally grown produce.
Determined to shift that statistic, Banksia Gardens is supporting high school students to set up vegetable gardens in their very own backyards and educating them on the importance of a healthy diet.
“We have youth learning how to cook in our cafe with the chef and then going home and cooking meals for the family,” Jaime said.
“They are cooking with ingredients they have never heard of and passing those learnings onto their family.
“There's been a huge amount of pride going in all directions, you know, because we feel proud of the young people, the young people feel proud of themselves as well and I think it's been a pretty incredible journey.”
Jaime said a lot of the challenges facing the local community were intergenerational and the programs at Banksia Gardens were focused on shifting this intergenerational disadvantage.
“We want all our programs to be impactful and meaningful,” he said.
“It’s probably not an accident that we have such a strong focus on community gardens because another thing that is really important for us is to link sustainability issues with the daily realities of our community.
“We live in a place where the levels of poverty make it impossible for people to choose to buy organic.
“We're trying to meet people where they're at. And then once they're engaged, we can have all sorts of conversations, but you have to start with things that are going to be real for people.”
When Gina was asked what connected communities looked like, she looked around the space and said, “it looks like this place”.
She recalled countless examples of people returning to volunteer at Banksia Gardens.
“I've got hundreds of stories where people come back and say this was such an important place for them,” she said.
“In just one of our programs we probably have about seven or eight tutors who were former students in the program.”
Through the hard work of its staff, volunteers and grant partners Banksia Gardens has been providing essential connection to the residents of Broadmeadows for generations. Article written by Mackenzie Archer.