I am pleased to announce today that the Australian Government is committing over $1.5 million in funding for 16 new projects under the Stronger Families and Communities Strategy. This brings to 640 the total number of projects across Australia approved under the Strategy, worth a total of $88 million.
The Strategy, which I launched in April 2000, has funded a wide range of community-based projects, including parenting and relationship education, community leadership training, assistance for families with young children, support for Indigenous families and communities, and the development of volunteering.
The Australian Government is committed to supporting Australians at the local level through ground-up solutions that work. This Strategy invests directly in the strengths, skills and capacities of Australians. The new projects are spread across Australia: six in New South Wales, two in Queensland, three in South Australia, three in Victoria and two in Western Australia. Nine of the projects are located in rural and regional areas.
These new projects include the Sisters of Charity Outreach (Liverpool, NSW), which has received $150,000 to provide parenting education and a peer support network for young parents, and the City of Greater Dandenong has received $110,721 to establish a social support network and advocacy group for young parents who are at risk of social isolation.
The ‘Wheatbelt Youth Leadership'; project has received $211,731 to train and mentor young people from the Wheatbelt region of Western Australia, providing them with skills and opportunities to become mentors in their own communities and manage youth-led projects. In Queensland, the Roma and District Community Support Association has received $86,071 for the ‘Fair Go for Families'; project. A project worker will be employed to work intensively with intergenerational welfare-dependent families to assist them to break the welfare dependency cycle.
The Strategy is designed to assist communities to develop their own practical and innovative long-term solutions to local problems. It is about Australians identifying issues of importance to their local communities and working in partnership with government to improve their quality of community and family life in tangible ways. A complete list of the new projects that are receiving funding is included in the accompanying media kit.