What we do
Community Works has completed many successful projects in partnership with communities, mainstream NGOs and governments in northern Australia, across the country and around the world. Our team strives for creative solutions to evidence-based social development. We have gained expertise in 19 countries including Australia, working with partners in fields such as community health (especially mental health), early childhood development, and social enterprise development.
We pride ourselves in the sensitivity of our approach by actively listening to community members, being respectful of people in vulnerable situations and strive to understand where people are coming from.
Please see below for examples of our work.
Our Services
Storytelling
Bringing life to community experience and knowledge
Peoples’ stories are often the most valuable sources of information, and collecting them helps communities achieve their goals. Community Works builds this rich data through a method known as Narrative-Based Research. For example, help gather stories about Country to build ideas and marketing for community-owned tourism, or support fishing charters to include water-based tours of Country.
Community Works is guided by the communities it works with to gather these stories to evaluate projects using a Community-Owned Evaluation method. Working with Indigenous professional services firm Ninti One, we have trained many community members to gather this data.
Another important approach we use is Co-Design, which sees better project results by bringing together the expertise of key stakeholders such as service providers, community groups, Elders and leaders. For example, a community deciding the best way to promote healthy activities supported by health professionals.
Picture it
Accessible communications and community-based training.
Community Works specialises in simplifying information into more accessible forms, especially for people from non-English speaking backgrounds. For example:
- service models displayed visually rather than in text
- visual project evaluation summaries
- visually communicating a community plan or aspiration.
Training
Community Works often hears that people need and want new skills to do things with and for their communities. We also specialise in training to help communities build capacity, such as helping to set up and run committees, especially to get funding for projects.
Social Impact
Maximising social impact by building on successes
Many successful projects are isolated examples. Community Works increases the social impact of successful projects by making them happen in more places. We have done this with projects such as women’s enterprise and mental health programs in Africa, family planning services in Central America and child-friendly urban spaces in South America. We are the exclusive Australian representative of ‘Spring Impact’, an international organisation that specialises in scaling successful projects.