General News
24 October, 2024
Wimmera PCP, Ballarat Foundation launches regional health, wellbeing fund
Wimmera PCP launches fund to support local community initiatives.
The Wimmera Primary Care Partnership has launched the Health and Wellbeing Fund in collaboration with the Ballarat Foundation, which aims to sustain health improvements in the region.
The fund will provide financial support to community programs focused on improving health outcomes in the Wimmera Southern Mallee region.
Grants will be available starting in 2025, with the fund managed through strategic investments, ensuring continued support for the community.
Ballarat Foundation chief executive Andrew Eales said he was proud to work with the Wimmera PCP to give Wimmera-based organisations an economic boost for years.
"We are proud to manage this fund and work alongside local voices to ensure that the grant-making process addresses the region's most urgent health and wellbeing needs," he said.
"By continuing the legacy of Wimmera PCP, this initiative will empower local organisations to drive positive and lasting change.
"This is a great partnership opportunity for us to help small community organisations really succeed [and] drive new projects..."
Mr Eales said the Ballarat Foundation would manage the fund and grant-making processes, ensuring long-term sustainability for health-related initiatives in the region.
The foundation manages 18 sub-funds in Ballarat and invests the pooled money with JBWere. The return is input back into the community via grants, ensuring the original capital diminishes.
"This is a fund forever," he said.
"Because of that investment process, we're just utilising the growth in the investment to deliver to the community.
"This is not a one year, a five year, or a 10 year partnership; this is going to deliver all community groups in this community for 50-100 years."
As part of the fund's design, a committee will be established to allow local voices to lead the grant decision-making process.
"We know and understand the connection that people have with their community," Mr Eales said.
"Many of our board directors and team have grown up in western Victoria. They know this region well.
"The last thing we want to do is to have another conversation about resources or infrastructure... moving out of this community. We're trying to do here is the opposite.
"We're trying to put the power back into local communities to have to make sure that they've got the decision-making ability and support to do that.
"We know that we can actually empower these communities by using our expertise, but it's very much local ownership that we want to reinforce."
In 2000, the Victorian government established 28 Primary Care Partnerships, funded by the Department of Health.
The organisations became well known for their work in community health promotion, establishing programs such as Rural Outreach and the Men's Shed.
However, as needs changed, the state government moved the PCPs into its public health units during the 2022-23 financial year.
During the past two years, the Wimmera PCP management committee developed this Health and Wellbeing Fund initiative, ensuring it would provide ongoing opportunities.
Wimmera PCP Inc chair Andrew Saunders said the partnership with the Ballarat Foundation would continue the organisation's work.
"This partnership will enable the legacy of the Wimmera Southern Mallee's community action to continue long into the future," he said.
"It comes after the WPCP Inc.'s successful 22-year partnership with the Wimmera Southern Mallee community, which has enabled the delivery of proactive responses to crises and the delivery of initiatives that improve health and wellbeing for our community."
Former CEO Geoff Witmitz said the fund would help continue two decades of positive outcomes.
"When the government announced the decision to wind up the 20 year program of PCPs and relocate us in the PHUs (Public Health Units), we were one of two of the organisations that were independent and were self governing as an incorporated body," he said.
"That meant we were probably more business-like. Therefore, we did have a sum of money at the end of it all that we thought, 'What would be the legacy that we could have?'.
"That's where the Ballarat Foundation came in."
Donations to the Wimmera PCP Health and Wellbeing Fund can be made via the Ballarat Foundation.
Applications for grants will be available in 2025.