Community Safety in Wyndham

The Wyndham Community Safety Grants are part of the wider Empowering Communities Grants Program. Wyndham City received funding to deliver the program through the Victorian Government’s Building Safer Communities Program in 2021.

The Empowering Communities Grants Program is designed to support local communities design and lead innovative projects and activities to address the causes of crime and improve perceptions of safety.

Empowering Communities funding aims to:

  • build the capability of the community to understand crime related issues and design and implement effective crime prevention approaches
  • strengthen relationships between community stakeholders to work in partnership to deliver crime prevention activity, and leverage community capacity to deliver sustainable outcomes beyond the funding period
  • engage and mobilise the community to address issues of local concern
  • build the evidence base for successful community development initiatives that address crime and safety issues
Building safer communities

Empowering Communities sets out key stages and activities through which Wyndham City Council works in partnership with the Local Action Group and State Government to ensure a strong community – led approach:

  • Establishing a Local Action Group (LAG) bringing together community expertise with a shared interest in improving safety in Wyndham
  • Delivering five localised community consultations and an online survey to identify local safety concerns and identified solutions to reduce crime and improve perceptions of community safety
  • Undertaking further targeted consultation and analysis of crime and social data to ensure broad community input
  • Developing a common goal, key safety priority areas, problem statement, a process to distribute the $370,000 and an evaluation method to measure overall success

Community Consultations and Further Analysis

We successfully delivered a series of five Community Safety Conversations and an online survey last July (2022) as part of the key stages of the Empowering Communities Grants Program. The conversations aimed to identify safety issues of concern and ways in which these issues could be addressed. A Findings Report was developed with the consultation results and was used by the Local Action Group to consider the issues raised, as well as further targeted engagement and identify the key priority areas.

Based on the Findings Report, further analysis of additional crime and social data, the LAG has now determined the common goal and key safety priority areas, a process to distribute funding to deliver community projects/activities and evaluation method to measure overall success. Wyndham City Council in partnership with the LAG developed the Wyndham Community Safety Grants Guidelines to ensure the funded projects or activities are properly managed and meet the agreed goal and key safety priority areas.

Wyndham Community Safety Grants

The opportunity to apply for Wyndham Community Safety Grants was available in June 2023. The funded Community Safety Projects and Activities were announced on 7 September.

The grants that were on offer were between $50,000 to $100,000. Overall, there was $370,000 in total to be distributed to successful applicants (Funding Organisations). The funding streams related to:

  • Building a sense of community - helping neighbourhoods feel safer; promote interfaith/ intercultural understanding and improve community connections.
  • Empowering children and young people: helping children and young people feel safer and provide opportunities, skills or insights to help them make positive life choices.

The Wyndham Community Safety Grants are an exciting initiative developed by local community stakeholders to address the causes of crime and improve perceptions of safety. The program supports local organisations working in partnership with community groups to generate tailored solutions around issues that are important to Wyndham’s community.

To find out more about the community safety projects funded through the Wyndham Community Safety Grant please visit here.

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