CERES Community - from local to global

by Noel Blencowe

CERES is a community organisation operating on 4 hectares of local council land on the banks of the Merri Creek in Brunswick. The purpose of CERES is to create a more socially-just and environmentally-sound future. CERES took over its land, originally a degraded tipsite, in 1982, and has since developed it into a thriving diversity of community projects. Some of the projects closely respond to the needs of local people - eg community gardens, community chooks, farm animals, a bike group, the Alternative Technology Association. Some projects are used by the many visiting school groups ( approximately 60,000 per year ) to learn about, and be inspired by, good environmental practice and the richness of cultures making up our multi-cultured city. CERES also has training and job-creation projects, a café, a nursery, a Saturday organic food market, and some spectacular festivals including 'the Return of the Kingfisher Festival', the 'Harvest Festival', and a 'Bushfood Festival'.

Community at CERES, as elsewhere, has many faces. Community lies along that spectrum of collections of beings that is somewhere between the individual and the global population. It's quite common these days, of course, to hear reference to the global community. Some might venture further and include all living creatures, even plants, within a community of life on the planet. Community differs from a group - although has some aspects in common. It assumes a diversity of individuals. It assumes the individuals have some interests in common and that they are in some way dependent on each other . It assumes that the individuals involved gain some benefit from being connected to that community. It assumes some respect within the group for the interests and contributions of each individual. Community implies a caring by members for each other - at least on some important aspects of their being. Community implies a feeling of belonging, sharing, co-operation, being supported, having forces or issues which bind individuals together. Community implies voluntary involvement, as distinct to acting out of a feeling of responsibility, or to abide by rules or laws. Individuals generally engage in community because they choose to - not because anyone is forcing them to. Individuals want to engage - because community has something to add to their lives which they can't find elsewhere. Community implies shared values on at least some important issues. CERES thinks of community both on the local level, and on the global level. It has many projects engaging people living in the nearby suburbs. But it also feels strong bonds with global people and environments. As such, it feels an urge to contribute to alleviate poverty and injustice throughout the world, and to engage in global environmental issues.

CERES thinks of itself as being born, and carried, on the wings of community. It was given birth from a particularly skillful community building process back in the late 1970's. Similar processes have been used throughout CERES history. The initial process essentially involved gathering people with an interest in creating a fairer and environmentally sound world. The process created opportunity for every individual's perceptions and passions to be listened to. It allowed opportunity for people of like passion to join together to pursue their particular areas of interest further. It enabled the group as a whole to act on a diversity of fronts - being united under common broad principles and values. The intentions of the group were publicized widely - and new people of like mind invited to contribute. There was always a strong sense of openness, good communication within and without, and attention to democratic decision-making.

Building community involves both a creative side and an organizational side. The creative side might include visioning, brainstorming and listening to people's dreams. The organizational side involves setting in place structures for recording, developing and monitoring actions to implement visions. It also involves developing good communication mechanisms for enabling open and democratic functioning.

There are many examples of community building constantly in process at CERES. CERES recently conducted a community consultation process for developing plans for a major new building complex - the Sustainable Community Centre. At the very earliest stages CERES organised several opportunities for the Architect to meet with local people and CERES members to brainstorm and elaborate on visions for the Centre. As a result there has been far greater richness of ideas built into the concept - as well as a broad variety of people feeling they have some ownership of the plan and willing to volunteer their energies to ensure it succeeds.

A short time ago CERES was faced with having to develop work conditions and a wage structure for its staff. This is a task which might normally be undertaken by the Management Committee of the organisation. CERES decided, as a community strengthening exercise with staff, to involve the staff themselves in researching and constructing their own conditions and wage structure. Their final product was put to the Management Committee and agreed to largely in tact. The outcome of this has been that the staff have an excellent understanding of the issues needing to be considered in addressing work conditions and wage issues. They feel that sense of ownership of the circumstances under which they work and as a result there have been very few difficulties at all over staffing issues.

One of the highlights of community building accomplishments by CERES can be witnessed in the Kingfisher Festival. This is a festival which brings several thousand people from local suburbs, from all walks of life, together to celebrate the success of revegetation works along the Merri Creek. The successful revegetation has brought wildlife, such as the Kingfisher, back to the Merri Creek valley. During the months before the festival CERES trainers meet with school groups, dance groups, singers, musicians, puppeteers, artists, people from numerous cultural organisations - and train them for roles to perform in the festival. During the festival there are in the order of five hundred local people actually performing. To unite such a large number of people from the local area is a major community building accomplishment in its own right. What is even more impressive is the respect attributed to local aboriginal people in the process. Local aboriginal people play a major role in the overall performance - and the story played out is built around their dreamtime stories, dances, and culture. The festival plays a unique role in creating the feeling that the many diverse elements of our local area - including aboriginal people, people from various cultural backgrounds, unemployed, young and old, disabled, and even kingfishers, eels, and gumtrees - are all part of the richness which make up our community.

During 2000/1 CERES has been developing its next 5 Year Plan. The process itself has been a rewarding community building exercise. In some ways it followed a similar process to that which gave birth to CERES. There were several community sessions in which people brainstormed visions for the future. Following that there were additional community sessions developing objectives and strategies. It has been a powerful process for capturing the passions of local people - and weaving them it CERES projects for the future. Interestingly one of the strong passions expressed related to expanding CERES perspective of community to encompass more actively people in developing countries. There was a strong feeling that increasingly all people, in fact all life including animals and plants, needed to be cared for as part of one global community. If we are to achieve the sort of world we would hope for - one which enables the most positive potential for all beings of the planet - then our perception of community must stretch this far.