On Thursday, 2 May, GROW signatories and partners met at the presentation of 2019 GROW Report Card, held at the new Baptcare Coasthaven Community in Norlane. This beautiful facility is providing significant local employment and high quality aged care support for 3214 residents.
Bill Mithen, CEO of backbone organisation the Give Where You Live Foundation delivered the GROW Report Card highlighting the following achievements, including:
- 110 Compact Signatories
- 72 of these Compact Signatories have live action plans, including 1,211 individual actions working to deliver the principles of GROW
- 112 jobs and 20 employment pathways offered by Compact Signatories to job seekers from GROW target communities (Corio, Norlane, Whittington and Colac)
- The reported local spend from signatories has reduced in the last financial year, although overall the trend is still positive, reporting a $16.8 million shift in local spend since 2015.
The event was attended by three tiers of Government including Cr Anthony Aikten (City of Greater Geelong), Christine Couzens MP (Member for Geelong) and Richard Marles MP (Member for Corio).
Richard Marles MP took the opportunity to announce that a Shorten Labor Government, if elected (on Saturday, 18 May 2019) will deliver $2 million to the G21 Region Opportunities for Work (GROW) project to build on work tackling joblessness.
For further information, please refer to the 2019 Report Card and/or G21 Regional dashboard.