What does Friends of Eaglemont Village do?

Friends of Eaglemont Village (FofEV) is active year round in engaging with, and representing our Eaglemont community.

The very visible parts of our activities are the free weekly electronic newsletters, and the bushland wildflower walks beautification works along the rail corridor.

In a less visible way we are constantly doing a lot of community consultation and advocacy on behalf of our community.

It is in this representational and advocacy role that having paid-up members becomes important. People who have "signed on" to the organisation and its Objectives. People who are "in the know, in the loop" whether actively or passively.

FofEV also applies for grants and sponsorship funds. These parties - eg Banyule Council, Bendigo Bank, Australia Post, the Federal Government - always ask, as they are entitled to do, questions to judge the size and effectiveness of this organisation.

How big, how many people to benefit, how do you communicate with them?

Sometimes FofEV comes out with petitions - 500+ on Odenwald Road bridge pedestrian safety, a community centre petition,  a petition for a local park our local children can walk to..

And there are more petitions to come - public toilets access will be next!

Virtually every week FofEV is involved with some local government matter:
• Council's budget, its processes & priorities
• Open spaces
• Community facilities
• Environmental issues, waste, recycling
• Bike paths
• Public toilet access
• Traffic and pedestrian safety
• Inclusion & social justice
• Aged care and active elders
• Planning matters - multiple occupancies, heritage
• Council bias against spending our rates in our area
• Council's skewed spending across areas & topics
• Footpath repairs
• Fly dumping reports
• Traffic sign damage
• Vandalism & graffiti reporting

Continuously we are undertaking community services type activities that do not always come to public notice - looking after or advising individuals in our community. We put people in touch with reliable tradespeople and services.

FofEV conducts a weekly community social walk around our neighbourhood - under the banner of Heart Foundation Walks. Each week an email goes out to 18 registered walkers, and a varying number front up on Sunday mornings.

We have in the pipeline 3 specific "community building" or networking activities:
• Mothers & babies network
• Sit and Sew
• Older men : new ideas

Behind the scenes there is a lot of invisible activity to underpin our visible activity  - already this year we have had 5 meetings with VicTrack, Metro Trains and Keep Australia Beautiful representatives to assess, to plan, to resource our grounds rehabilitation work.

Numerous meetings take place to get consensus among ourselves, eg before action on grant applications - of which we have submitted 3 so far this year.

Once a month a small team attends Ryder-Cheshire Homes in Ivanhoe to undertake volunteer grounds maintenance to help a charity service. They provide accommodation to country people needing to be in Melbourne for their own or a family member's medical treatment which is not available near their homes.

We help Ryder-Cheshire to better help others.

We help our own immediate community by organising Clean Up Australia Day and National Tree Day events.

We stepped up in the Covid lockdown era to help relieve our community's isolation. Kids focussed window displays in the Village shops, alternative Anzac Day ceremonies (socially distanced of course), the Fairy Garden.

We provided our disrupted local community the opportunity for exercise and a sense of purpose doing land rehabilitation near home when the oppression and worry of Covid lockdowns hung over us.

Making the  place we live in better is a secondary but important objective.