Our History
Whittlesea Community Connections was established in 1973 by local residents concerned with the lack of services to meet the support needs of the area and the community.
Whittlesea Community Connections has been an integral part of the community for more than 40 years. Created by the community to support local people, we have been providing vital services for disadvantaged people and emerging communities since 1973.
We are a place –based organisation and we prioritise fostering real and direct relationships within our community in order to best understand community needs, provide an opportunity for the community to have a say about issues of importance to them and for us to remain accountable to the community. In this way, ours is a bottom up, outward looking community development approach.
Our vision is for a Whittlesea in which people and agencies work together to make a positive difference to their community, ensuring that everyone has equal access to the community’s resources and services. We will achieve this by offering services and programs that address disadvantage in the community, and which promote community participation and involvement. We are independent of any government, political or religious ideology and of any vested economic interests.
After more than 40 years of community-centred and community led achievements, WCC is striving to broaden its impact and respond to the dual challenges of entrenched urban disadvantage and rapid population growth.
We are constantly reviewing our approach and critically examining the way we work – we owe it to the people we work for to be as effective as possible in achieving our mission and vision.
We will develop and consolidate our community development approach, meaningfully involving and engaging the community in our work; the direct assistance we provide to support disadvantaged community members will be informed by strengths based approaches that respect people’s right to self-determination; we will invest in partnerships that are based on integrity, transparency and that are consistent with our own values; we will increase our membership and commit to staying accountable – providing up-dates, stories and information that explain what we do and what is happening in our community.
