Hi it’s Leanne here.

It’s not everyday we have exciting new ideas 💡 (well maybe it is - we’re often planning new things) but it’s definitely not everyday that we also get the money to implement our exciting ideas!

However, we recently succeeded in getting a grant from the State Government for our new project - Covid Roulette - and we are now running at full steam to get it completed by mid May - when the funding needs to be expended.

Covid Roulette is a podcast series documenting the lived experience of Covid in our neighbourhood and more broadly across Darebin and Yarra.

As you have all probably experienced yourselves in the last few months, Covid is pretty much everywhere in our community and most of us now have our own Covid story in our family or friendship group.

What we are trying to do in our series is to capture an interesting mix of these stories, highlighting a range of social, emotional, economic and health impacts associated with catching Covid … for posterity, but also to enable us all to hear and understand the impacts for others, and hopefully encourage those who are still feeling vaccine hesitant to learn more about the disease through neighbourhood stories and understand better the gamut of risks that Covid poses.

We’re already well into recording and today we started publishing. You can find our first episode - Polly - on our website here … or on Spotify, Google, Apple and Amazon podcast/music services.

And … if you have a story you would like to share please let us know. You can email me here.

You might be a mum who has felt the burden of parenthood as the primary carer in these times, a person who couldn’t work while isolating and experienced economic impacts, someone who got quite sick, or had weird symptoms or someone who is experiencing long-covid etc. You might have a personal story and a professional perspective you could share.

From the dramatic to the mundane to the heartfelt … we’d really love to hear from you!

It’s always nice to end the term with a crowd, and it was lovely to have so many people along on Friday morning for Arty Gardening followed by Morning Tea. It was a gorgeous morning.

So many things were happening … we had Crystal drawing flowers, Sandra and Mark picking herbs to make little wardrobe bags to keep the bugs out of clothes and things smelling nice, Debra setting up seed trays (we’re getting some calendula and pak choy seeds sprouting hopefully) and Derek and David helping Clare in the shed to drill the holes in our soon to be finished worm towers.

And then we had more people turn up for morning tea - on the menu the most AMAZING chocolate biscuits made by Kinfolk.

In the garden this week Clare planted some more natives out on the front corner. And we dug some fertiliser in to the second productive garden bed in the front yard so it’s ready for a new crop to be planted when we are back.

Which will be on Tuesday 26 April.

So happy Easter, we hope the Easter bunny visits you … and we’ll see you on the other side of the school holidays! If you need to get in contact with us during this time please email info@alphington.org.au.

Alphington Community Centre is a friendly, welcoming, kind and caring community space, run by paid staff, funded through a patchwork of stable ongoing funding and short term grants and overseen by a wonderful community committee that meets around 8 times a year on the fourth Monday of the month at 8pm to provide strategic direction.

We currently have 5 committee members and we’re keen for one or two more.

If you are kind-hearted and community-minded and would be interested in helping us with our big picture thinking we’d love you to consider joining our committee of governance.

Please email Leanne or call our office on 9499 7227 if this sounds like your cup of tea.

Hi Leanne here. Well term one is drawing to a close, and we’ll be taking leave for two weeks from this coming Friday. We will be back on Tuesday 26 April.

We hope you have a happy Easter and a lovely break.

And … If you are keen on a road trip along the lines of a four hour drive to Western Victoria, and a fun community event - I’ll see you at the Cavendish Redgum Festival on the last weekend of the holidays. My sister Merryn helps organise this festival in her tiny country town on the western side of the Grampians, and I am helping out with the catering for the Friday opening event and will also be assisting with the nature craft activities for kids (a specialty of mine as you all know from our events) on Saturday. There’ll also be tethered hot air balloon rides, bus tours to see magnificent trees, music, food and a dog jumping competition … fun!

Click here to find out more about the Cavendish Redgum Festival.

The inaugural ‘people’s choice’ at the Alphington Show goes to Florence Maslen for her beautiful plaited bread.

Thanks Heather for suggesting this new addition to the show - it was a great way to get the community involved on the day.

For anyone yet to collect their entries, please drop by this week - the last few remaining items are in the foyer.

And congratulations once again to all those who entered. It was really fun to see how talented and creative so many people in our community and beyond are.