Inspiring Environmental Stewardship and Changemaking in the Cooks River

They say that rivers carry stories and have a special way of connecting people through their waters. 

Rivers are natural assets in our communities with rich histories and biodiversity. 

One of these rivers is the Cooks River also known as the heart of Sydney. 

Aboriginal people have been living peacefully along the Cooks River and taking care of it for more than a thousand generations.

However, with urbanisation along the years and all the issues that come with that, unfortunately, Cooks River is today the most polluted river in Australia.

The Invite

In 2019, I was invited by the Cooks River Alliance, to run a series of workshops for the Cooks River Changemakers Course, using the Asset Based Community Development approach.

The Cooks River Alliance is a partnership between councils in the Cooks River catchment: Bayside Council, City of Canterbury Bankstown, Inner West Council and Strathfield Council. 

The Cooks River Changemakers Course invited passionate Cooks River people to participate in a program exploring how to use their skills, knowledge and passions to work with others on Cooks River projects. 

Changemakers Course

Community members, passionate about the river joined the course and embarked on an amazing adventure. 

They went on a field trip, heard from guest speakers, participated in a series of workshops and a final graduation event.

Participants got to codesign and co-lead a series of projects such as family picnics, scavenger hunts, front yard blitzes, mullets kayak clean ups and full moon walks.

Methodology

Some of the participatory approaches and tools, I used in the workshops were: 

• Open Space Technology to help develop a shared vision.
• Asset Mapping to map the different assets in the group and the wider community. 
• Strengths based prototyping to codesign the different projects. 
• Photovoice to identity individual and group strengths.
• Community theatre for the changemakers to showcase the success stories of their prototypes. 
• Circle way to share their experience throughout the course and their vision for the river. 

During the final graduation event, we run a circle to encourage participants to step into their leadership and connect to their highest vision in a more heartfelt way. 

In the process we discovered that we are all Cooks River people! 

See a video here that captured a bit of the magic that took place: 

Cooks River Changemakers - our story

If you would like to find about future initiatives in the Cooks River, please visit:

Cooks River Alliance Website

Offer

As we are still going through some challenging times with Covid-19, we are happy to offer a 20mins free consultation over the phone on how to use the ABCD in your organization or community to inspire citizen-led action. 

Please contact us at [email protected] to book your free consultation.  

Regards,

Dimitrios Papalexis, Soulgen

Working Towards a Soulful Generation

Soulgen Website