You can use an action group to help organise your school’s hub. This group of people can then work together to create an action plan for your hub.

Make sure you learn about your school’s community before you set up an action group.

Think about who to include on the action group

Take time to plan how your action group will work. Think about:

• who to involve
• how best to involve them
• what you want to achieve.

These two resources can help you enhance and strengthen your community relationships.

• Involve us – community engagement resource.
• Children’s voices – framework for children and young people’s participation as valued citizens and learners.

Identify relevant and interested stakeholders

List all potential partners connected with your school. Include state and community based organisations and services.

You could include people:

• whose daily roles are aligned with developing the hub (council, community development officer, local library)
• who will benefit most (local business, local community, arts, cultural and sporting organisations)
• with a track record of supporting successful school initiatives
• with particular skillsets (project planning, facilitation, community engagement, finance, coaching)
• with existing strong connections
• who could be a potential funding source (foundations or businesses who offer grants)
• from other schools.

Think about workload

When you involve more people in your school, it will take time to plan and set up. If you spend more time up-front, you will need less as time goes on.

You can help reduce workload when you use the skills of:

• people on your governing council
• families
• students
• volunteers.

It started off with a bit of extra work but now we have refined our advice and processes. It runs itself really.

- School principal

Find other ways to involve more people

People who are not part of the action group can still be involved in other ways. For example, they can:

• help out with specific tasks listed by the action group
• support communications and events
• help to deliver programs or lead projects
• give feedback on how things are progressing.

You can get students involved in this process. For example, they could:

• develop online surveys
• interview stakeholders
• collate information for planning sessions.

Change your action group as needs change

Your school’s needs change over time, so you can invite people to join the action group as these needs change.

Choose people who have a strong connection to your school. Think about people who can influence change and collectively achieve the outcomes.

Create a formal terms of reference

You should develop a terms of reference for your action group.

You can use one of the terms of reference templates from the department’s governing council webpages as a starting point.