The Community Fellows Program is Melbourne Social Equity Institute's flagship program fostering community-engaged and coproductive research. Last week friends, colleagues and University of Melbourne staff gathered to celebrate the achievements of the fifth cohort of Fellows. In this post, co-founder of the program Charlene Edwards reflects on the event.
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On Tuesday 16 July we had the pleasure of celebrating the achievements of our 2023/2024 cohort of Community Fellows. Whilst we have supported over 40 Fellows since we first piloted the program in 2016, for me personally, this fifth group of Fellows was particularly special as it was the first to truly benefit from a cohort experience.
A few highlights of the event include getting the majority of the Fellows together for the first time this year (a couple are now based interstate or overseas), hosting the Fellows’ friends, families and colleagues who had come to celebrate their achievements, and Penne’s very thoughtful reflection on her participation in the Fellowship and the benefits gained.
It was wonderful to hear from Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Mark Cassidy who spoke about the transformative potential of community-led research to contribute to more socially equitable societies. Thank you to Professor Cassidy who also presented certificates of achievement to the Fellows.
Unfortunately – but unsurprisingly – many of our last cohort of Fellows (2021/2022) were negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns. We never had the chance to meet many of them in-person and most didn’t finish their projects. When we selected the 2023/2024 cohort, we were determined to provide opportunities for deeper connection to the Institute, to our academic colleagues and amongst the Fellows themselves.
Not only did these Fellows fully embrace all opportunities presented to them, but also each contributed to creating a safe learning space and were very generous in their support of each other. It has been such a pleasure getting to know these Fellows; they are incredible people working to make their communities more just, fair and equitable.
The program wouldn’t be possible without the willingness and enthusiasm of the academic mentors to support community-led research. It has been gratifying to hear from academic mentors as to how they have benefited from the opportunity to engage with their Fellows and how much they have learned from them. One of the program aims was to support reciprocity and two-way learning and we have seen this in action with this cohort.
As we now set our minds to recruiting our next group of Community Fellows to commence in 2025, I truly hope that the same spirit of curiosity, respect and comradery will be a feature of all future cohorts.
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Photographer: Peter Casamento