We have continued to beaver away, working hard to bring our community information about renewable energy, together with opportunities to purchase solar and battery, and solar hot water systems for homes and businesses. See below for links to our website where you can get further information and express your interest in installing solar power and/or solar hot water.
Strengthening & securing our administration: At the end of July 2020 we completed a major project in integrating our administrative systems to an online communication and document storage system, which is working very well for us. We received $10,000 funding from Sustainability Victoria to do this and we submitted a detailed report which will be of benefit to other community groups. We have now received the go ahead to share that report with other community groups. Let us know if you would like a copy.
Strengthening environment group communications across the municipality: We have set up a Forum on our website just for environmentally focused groups from the Yarra Ranges and Yarra Valley. This will enable all groups to interconnect and communicate with each other when they feel the need to. All groups have been contacted to participate and we are heartened by the response so far. If you are a member of an environmentally focused group and would like your group to be part of this communication channel, please get in touch with your committee to let them know this.
Supporting our financial members: We have also been working to create greater access for our financial members to enable them to communicate with each other and to access information they might like to see, with a Members’ Only website portal where there is a Forum and document access to Minutes of meetings and reports and other information of interest. If you are a financial member of Healesville CoRE and would like access, do get in touch.
Very successful AGM held on 7 September via webinar: Our new committee is now up and running and holding meetings using video. Our President presented our comprehensive Annual Report for 2019-20, produced very professionally this year with the pro bono support of James McDermid, graphic designer, whose input was greatly appreciated. Click here for access to the Annual Report. Our two guest speakers, Simon Prunster from Yarra Valley Water and Julian Guess from Yarra Ranges Council both presented very exciting developments in renewable energy projects both locally and nearby. To view video of Simon’s presentation, click here.
Some of our Current Projects:
- We are working on installing three solar systems on not for profits in Healesville, using Federal funding facilitated by our local MHR Tony Smith. We had a couple of problems to overcome, which have now been resolved and this project will soon recommence. The $90,000 investment will bring long term energy savings of 10’s of thousands of dollars to each organization for the next 20-30 years: the Healesville Living and Learning Centre, the Robyn Jane Children’s Centre and the Galena Beek Cultural Centre, just near the Healesville Sanctuary will all benefit. We are scheduled to have the project completed between December 2020 and March 2021.
- Six volunteers have been trained as home energy efficiency advisors to provide free advice to home owners who would like to participate, and this project is now well under way in preparation for when home visits will be permitted again.
- This week we completed an application for grant funding to develop, with consultancy support, a comprehensive Community Engagement Strategy which, if our application is successful, we hope to complete between April and July 2021.
- On 22 September our President tabled the Healesville CoRE Annual Report at the Yarra Ranges Council meeting and addressed Council about the work of Healesville CoRE, with very positive comments from a number of Councillors. If you would like to read this presentation click here.
- He also presented a report to the Yarra Ranges Environment Advisory Committee (YREAC) on 10 September, with much support from those present.
- We are working on a suite of policies to strengthen our committee and governance systems and processes and this project, funded by a $6,200 grant from FRRR is nearing completion.
We participated in a codesign process with Dr Helen Haines, the Independent Federal MP for Indi, to assist in the development of the ambitious Local Power Plan, which was launched on 23 September 2020. View the details here.